


dying’s not the issue (you are)

by featherx



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crest Experiment Linhardt von Hevring, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, M/M, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 68,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26084182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/featherx
Summary: It is Imperial Year 1175. Linhardt von Hevring is twelve years old. In a kinder world, he would have been sixteen when he first killed.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63





	1. aglaophotis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinonic/gifts).



> as the tags say, it's crest experiment linny! i got the idea from [this wonderful art](https://twitter.com/squipkechi/status/1289496330323124224) a few weeks ago and i haven't been the same person since, as you can tell from this monster :) hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _An herb used for warding off demons, witchcraft, and fever. However, a presentation released twenty centuries after its initial discovery states it is instead used to call upon dark forces._ ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglaophotis))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW** : needles, emeto, mild gore. the first two are very minor mentions and the last one is probably close to canon-typical violence, but i used graphic depictions archive warning to be safe

Linhardt had once read a book on something called _soulmates._ They were apparently people connected by fate or destiny or some other intangible concept that could not be supported by science and research and should therefore have been no use to Linhardt, but for some reason he found himself reading past the first few pages anyway. The book detailed the theory of soulmates, how something about a person would simply feel _good_ and _right_ and it would be like seeing every single star in the night sky, even the invisible lines connecting the constellations. There would be _firsts_ to count and catalog like medicine bottles: first meetings you would never forget, first impressions you would always remember. First words that would stick to you like honey and tree sap.

He’s not sure why he’s thinking of this now when the second son of Count Bergliez, Minister of Military Affairs, Extremely Big Blue Irritation With a Face Father Would Certainly Like to Hex, is standing before him and declaring, “Your hair’s way too long. You’re gonna trip on it when we play!”

“What?” is all Linhardt can come up with.

Caspar von Bergliez, who is also extremely blue but probably has not done anything to deserve a hexing to the face, steps forward and tugs none-too-gently at Linhardt’s hair. “Way too long,” he says again. “Don’t you ever trip on it when _you_ play?”

“I don’t… play,” Linhardt says. Even the very word sounds foreign on his tongue. “I don’t go out of the house much.”

“What?” Caspar sounds aghast. “Then what do you do for fun?”

“Read,” Linhardt suggests. “Study. Sleep.”

“Linhardt,” Caspar says, very seriously and also messing up the pronunciation of Linhardt’s name in the process, “that’s not fun at all. Let’s go out! I’ll teach you tag or something.”

Linhardt frowns. “You don’t need to teach me that. I know what it is. Also,” he adds primly, “I’m not to get my clothes dirty.” Mother is always on his case about keeping the house _clean_ and _neat_ and _will you stop leaving all your books on the floor, dear!_ “Anyway, you’re here on important business, not to play,” he informs a dejected-looking Caspar.

“My _dad’s_ here for that, not _me,_ ” Caspar huffs. “Come on! Okay, fine, you can sit under a tree and _read_ or whatever and I’ll play by myself. Look!” He gestures at the clear, sunny sky. “It’s a great day to be outside!”

“My skin peels if I’m under the sun too long,” Linhardt tells him. “You’ll have to take responsibility if anything happens.”

Caspar nods. “So you’ll come, right?”

“Fine,” Linhardt concedes. Caspar’s right, after all—it _is_ a nice day today, and reading under sunlight might be better than reading under lamplight. “Let me get my books.”

Linhardt’s memory is always all over the place, as if it had split itself into several pieces and scattered throughout his bedroom, hiding between the pages of books and under the bed and behind the shelves. But somehow he finds it difficult to forget this day, when Caspar drags him out to a nearby field where there is a large, convenient tree for Linhardt to hide under the shade of and there are fallen sticks and branches everywhere for Caspar to swing around in place of a sword. The breeze is pleasant. The sunshine is warm. It’s a good day.

For once, Linhardt can’t bring himself to focus on the book on his lap, despite how very interesting the illustrations of fish are. Instead he watches Caspar run around and imitate his older brother by jabbing at a rock with a branch as if it were a lance (he’s terrible at it, but it isn’t as if Linhardt, who has never held so much as a kitchen knife in his hands, can say anything).

Linhardt’s never had a friend before, that much he knows. Father didn’t trust the local schools, said they hardly taught anything of worth in them, and so hired several private tutors and teachers instead. The farthest Linhardt has ever walked is from his bedroom to the living room, where he will sit down at the glass table, open up a textbook, and pretend to listen to some wizened old professor drone on about subjects he couldn’t bring himself to care about if he tried. Other children his age always seemed so far away.

“Caspar,” he calls. His voice isn’t used to being any louder than a mumble, and it takes him two more tries before Caspar hears him and comes running over, plopping onto the grass next to Linhardt. “Aren’t you tired?”

Caspar shakes his head. “I can do this all day! Why?”

“You’ll get hurt if you keep going.” Linhardt presses down on a bruise blooming on his knee, where Linhardt had seen him bump against a pesky boulder earlier, and Caspar winces as expected. “See?”

“It’ll go away on its own!” Caspar insists. “My mom told me this super-secret way to cure everything and anything though. Better than medicine or magic!”

Linhardt frowns. “There’s nothing better than medicine or magic. I would know. My father can do both, and he’s the best doctor in all of Adrestia.”

“He is?” Caspar says incredulously, apparently having completely forgotten what he had just been talking about. “My dad always talks about how much he hates your dad. It sounds funny. They didn’t even do anything to each other except for, like, talk. When we’re older, Linhardt,” he says, bouncing giddily where he’s seated, “let’s not hate each other, okay? I wanna be best friends with you forever!”

“Best friends?” Linhardt repeats, not sure if what he’s feeling can be accurately classified as surprise or bewilderment. “But we’ve only known each other for one day. Less than one day.”

“So?”

Linhardt opens his mouth, then realizes he can’t come up with anything to counter that. _A best friend…_ He’s never had a best friend before. He’s never had a friend before, period. Caspar is nice, too. He talks about weapons almost as fast as Linhardt does when he gets excited about different kinds of fish, and he doesn’t get annoyed or mad at Linhardt for being sleepy or preferring to read rather than run around, and he smiles so big and so wide all the time that Linhardt, who has grown used to living in a household where he only ever encountered smiles and laughs in story books, can’t imagine ever growing used to happiness and companionship offered so freely.

But he wants it. Wants Caspar’s happiness and companionship and friendship and… Caspar.

It feels so strange, to want someone who isn’t a rare book or a sweet dessert. Linhardt had never known one could _want_ anyone as badly and as suddenly as right now, just because Caspar had so casually happened to bring it up. Linhardt’s sure Caspar has other friends too, back in Enbarr or Bergliez, and yet Caspar wants to be _Linhardt’s_ best friend. Why? What’s there about Linhardt to even consider best friend material?

“You don’t need any of that,” Caspar says, and Linhardt jolts in surprise when he realizes he’d said all of that _aloud._ “I just wanna be best friends with you. You’re cool! I don’t like reading ‘cause I always get bored no matter what but you really like it, so it’s like you’re stronger than me there. And, just… I dunno!” He grins, wide and crooked, the gap between his teeth stealing Linhardt’s attention. “It just feels right with you!”

Soulmates, Linhardt remembers. Something about a person would feel good and right. Things would fall into place. The sky is clear, the breeze is cool, the birds are singing. It’s a good day to be outside.

“Okay,” Linhardt agrees. “Let’s be best friends, then.”

On the way back to the Hevring estate, Caspar talks Linhardt’s ear off about the lances his older brother uses, but how they’re always so weak and flimsy that they end up snapping after just a few days of use, so when Caspar grows up he’s _definitely_ gonna be using _axes,_ which are _way_ better than some boring old spears. Linhardt promises to research on the supposed durability of axes for him, even though he’s fairly sure he’d rather sleep for a week than go anywhere near an actual bladed weapon.

In return, Linhardt regales him with a fountain of facts about the Teutates pike, which in Linhardt’s opinion is, perhaps, one of the Goddess’ most amazing creations second only to the Queen Loach—in fact! Did Caspar know, impossible though it may be to believe, that the Teutates pike can reach up to speeds of 40 miles per hour despite their large size—

Linhardt abruptly loses this train of thought when his foot catches on a stupidly-positioned rock and he falls face-first into the dirt.

He is vaguely aware of Caspar yelping his name, but right now all Linhardt can focus on is the sudden, stinging pain on his knee, where it had come into contact with something he most certainly does not want to think about. The most amount of pain he has ever had to endure was a headache caused by reading too much in the dark, or accidentally tripping on a loose floorboard in the storage room and having a passing maid fuss over how the bruise develops so quickly on his pale skin. Never anything that actually _hurt._

“Linhardt, Linhardt, Linhardt.” Someone touches his elbow, and Linhardt blinks hazily, staring up at Caspar’s worried face. “It’s fine. It’s just a scratch.”

“S-Scratch?” Linhardt whimpers. He is not proud of the wobble in his voice but right now his mind is far too occupied with keeping itself busy so that it pointedly does not think about what a _scratch_ may entail. “Is there… Is there…”

“It’s okay! I know what to do!” Caspar reassures. He crouches next to Linhardt on the grass, folding his legs a little to be eye-level with his knee. Linhardt tries not to sniffle when he looks down at himself—the fabric on his trousers has torn, and he can see the promised scratch, a thin line of red that stands out against the rest of his skin.

_Blood,_ his mind supplies. _Blood._ It’s disgusting. It’s sickening. He shouldn’t be bleeding. He shouldn’t be…

Caspar leans down and, after gently picking blades of grass and specks of dirt out of the way, presses his lips against the wound.

Linhardt blinks. It still stings, but now he’s more confused than pained. “What… What was that?”

“I kissed it better,” Caspar proudly declares. “That’s what my mom always does. Magic and medicine is good an’ all, but you can’t go wrong with this either! See, it doesn’t hurt anymore, right?”

“It still does,” Linhardt says.

“Oh.” Caspar frowns. “Okay, but you’re not all paralyzed like you were just a while ago, aren’t you? This’ll heal by itself in a while. Soon you won’t even remember this was ever here!” He grins and stands back up, holding his hand out to Linhardt. “Come on. Let’s get back to your place. Maybe your mom or dad or someone can get you a band-aid.”

Linhardt stares at his outstretched hand for a little while. He had never heard of such a strange, convoluted, and certainly unsuccessful method of treating wounds. If he ever brought the idea of kissing an injury better to Father, he would probably be touted as the laughingstock of the entire Hevring family line. Perhaps it’s similar to wound-licking among animals, particularly mammals, Linhardt reasons. He’s seen stray dogs and cats on the streets of Enbarr lick themselves sometimes. An interesting theory—he’d have to look into it more, to see if there are any similar cultural practices that utilize…

He realizes he’s been sitting and staring for longer than just ‘a little while,’ and hastily takes Caspar’s hand. It’s bigger and warmer and rougher than his, which Linhardt, for some reason, suddenly finds miles more interesting than whatever he had just been thinking about. “Thank you, Caspar,” he says. It’s only polite. “I never knew. I… guess it does feel better now.” Or he’s just grown used to the pain.

Caspar grins again, big and toothy. “I knew it! Okay, let’s go! And watch where you’re walking this time!”

They head back to the estate together, where Father and Count Bergliez must still be arguing about politics and governance and whatever else two old men who hate each other can argue about. In a few days, Caspar will probably return to Enbarr, and Linhardt will be left alone in the estate once again, at least until the month ends and Father will bring them back to their home in the Empire capital. Maybe then Linhardt can spend more time with Caspar in the city. There’ll be more things to do there, he thinks—and he realizes with a start that this might be the first time in a long while that he’s ever looked forward to leaving the house.

Soulmates. An intangible concept without any concrete evidence to support it with, but a concept Linhardt finds himself thinking about all the same. Perhaps research doesn’t always have to be so clear-cut after all.

There are many things Linhardt learns. The first is that he very much detests having to stay in their estate in Hevring territory every odd month or so, because it doesn’t have as big a library as the one in Enbarr and because, obviously, Caspar isn’t quite as nearby. The second is because among all of Linhardt’s tutors, Father is the worst of them all, if only because he seems to think these months are the perfect opportunity to drill lessons in Linhardt’s head.

Father teaches him mathematics, medicine, matters which Linhardt almost wishes he doesn’t understand as fast as he does. For Father, success is not something Linhardt should strive and work hard to achieve—no, success is a given, especially for _a child of his caliber._ Linhardt solves problems, answers questions, goes through books at an alarming rate even for him, and Father only ever says _of course, as expected, as the heir of Hevring you have no room for failure._ Father brings him to his clinic in Enbarr, has him sit in the corner and watch as Father goes through each patient for the day. He wields syringes and pills and prescriptions like weapons, wipes blood off his white coat at the end of the day and only succeeds in smearing it further across the fabric.

But Mother teaches him magic.

Enbarr is too busy and cramped of a capital to grow anything more than weeds, which is why Mother adores the time they spend in Hevring, where her sprawling garden behind the estate is one that seems to go on and on, as far as Linhardt can see. There are gardeners—plural, because there is no way just one can handle a garden of this magnitude—but most of the time Mother dismisses them early, says she’ll handle her treasures herself.

She teaches him the Heal spell first, faith magic that sparkles and glows and serves as a very convenient night light whenever Linhardt’s particularly engrossed in a book. His Crest manifests for the first time the week after he masters the spell, when Caspar falls and scrapes his elbow and Linhardt casts the spell with perhaps more panicking and stammering than necessary. “The Crest of Cethleann,” Mother says, when Linhardt brings it up the next day, when they’re sitting in the garden together and she’s brushing his too-long hair. “A Crest of one of the Four Saints.”

“Cethleann,” Linhardt repeats to himself, softly. He’s already studied the history of Fódlan, of course, from the Goddess’ descent to the War of Heroes to the War of the Eagle and the Lion. It had all been interesting when it had still been new, but now Linhardt just thinks things could probably have been accomplished much easier and neater if they had all just _talked_ beforehand. It seems Fódlan is perpetually doomed to be waged war upon.

“Yes,” Mother says, and Linhardt reluctantly tunes her back in, having forgotten they were speaking at all. “This Crest is one of the few that has natural healing properties. It’s a Crest that was and will never be meant for violence, only growth and healing. Your father and I were delighted to realize you had inherited it.”

Caspar doesn’t have a Crest, Linhardt thinks to himself. He doesn’t seem to care much about not having one, though, despite his decidedly smaller inheritance as a result.

The wind blows through, soft and cool, bending the stems of flowers and the heads of the Angelica herbs Mother loves so much. The tea she makes from it is, if nothing else, certainly relaxing, though in Linhardt’s opinion it could stand to be sweeter. When the wind dies down and Mother has finished smoothing down Linhardt’s ruffled hair, she shuffles to sit beside him and says, “Let me show you something else.”

She closes her eyes and holds her hands out before her chest. Now-familiar magic gather in her palms, but instead of the bright white of faith spells, it’s a faint green instead, one that reminds Linhardt of spring leaves and lily pads in the pond. Mother releases the spell with gentleness so unlike her usual overbearing self, and Linhardt watches, fascinated, as the gusts of wind blow through the garden as natural as the earlier breeze. His hair billows around him, but for once he isn’t as bothered by the length as he normally is.

“The Wind spell,” Mother says, smiling down at him. The flowers and herbs dance and sway to the breeze, basking in the sunlight, and for some reason Linhardt can’t stop staring. “Your father may say it’s important to learn reason magic, but personally I just want you to focus on faith. What will be more important in the future anyway? Heal spells will always have a use. But Wind…”

“I want to learn,” Linhardt says. “Please teach me.”

Mother sighs, and for a moment she looks so sad. Sometimes in the mornings Linhardt heads down to get himself some milk or water and he’ll pass by her bedroom, the door ajar, and see her crying over nothing. He had tried to ask about it, once, but the words fell short in his throat, and he gave up in the end. “Mother,” he says, softly, “is it alright?”

She lays a hand on his shoulder, grip almost tight enough to hurt. “Promise me you will use this magic for good,” she whispers. “Your father is a good man, my angel, but I fear he is teaching you things you have no business learning. When you’re of age he plans to enroll you into the Officer’s Academy in Garreg Mach, too. And I know how much you dislike blood.”

Linhardt looks down at the grass. Had he been that obvious? Or perhaps Mother is simply that observant. She rarely spends time with them in the clinic, after all, but she picked up on it while Father remains perfectly ignorant. “Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, Mother,” he says, trying to sound as genuine as possible. Sincerity doesn’t come as easy to him as it seems to do with Caspar, who simply oozes honesty from his pores. Sometimes Linhardt’s almost jealous.

Mother’s smile is shakier than usual. “Then listen closely. The Wind spell is the weakest of the basic reason spells, but as an element it is also more difficult to control…”

Linhardt’s read all sorts of horror stories on reason magic, how even the smallest of mistakes can set the caster on fire or electrocute an innocent passerby. But the Wind spell comes so easily to him, it’s almost ridiculous—after he gets used to the motions he heads out into the garden everyday, just to cast the spell and watch the flowers and herbs sway and dance to the breeze _he_ made, the wind _he_ created. He writes about it in his letters to Caspar, and Caspar in turn begs him to demonstrate when he comes back to Enbarr, especially on the hot sunny days when there’s never so much as a puff of air on the scorching streets.

Mother teaches him magic. To her, success is something to celebrate, to hug Linhardt tight and kiss the top of his head and tell him how well a job he’s done. With her, it almost feels like he isn’t the next Count Hevring, or heir to the estate, or bearer of the Crest of Cethleann, or anything—just Linhardt. Just himself, in the same way he feels _just himself_ with Caspar, too.

Perhaps that’s why it hurts as hard as it does when she dies, some two years later, of a disease so impossible, so incurable, that not even Father had been able to save her.

Linhardt is nine years old. In the books he reads, children did not—should not—understand the concept of death, not entirely. Some studies said they would think it was their fault a loved family member or friend had passed away, and that they would blame themselves for what happened. Yet more articles suggested an adult, such as a surviving parent, should sit down and explain, in simple terms, what death was about.

Father does none of that. It does not matter—there is no need to. Linhardt is nine years old, curled up in bed under layers and layers of blankets, and right now he understands death more than anything else in the world.

“Lin,” Caspar calls from outside. For once his voice is soft, but probably only because it’s muffled by both Linhardt’s locked door and his blankets over his head. “Aren’t you going to attend the funeral?”

Linhardt doesn’t respond. It seems pointless. Of course he’s not going to the funeral. He’s here, after all.

“Since you’re not going, I won’t go either,” Caspar says, after allowing a lengthy silence. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” Linhardt manages, his voice cracking from disuse. He can’t remember the last time he’s spoken within the past week—he can’t remember _anything_ from the past week, in general. Time had blurred the arrows of the clock, the lines between hours and days. Perhaps it would blur the memories of today as well, and the memories of Mother he clings to like a lost man adrift at sea.

“No,” he says again, louder. He doesn’t want to forget. He doesn’t—“I don’t want you to leave. Caspar. Caspar, are you there? I—”

“I’m here! I’m here.” The door rattles against its hinges. Linhardt imagines Caspar having been sitting down and then scrambling to stand up, and suddenly Linhardt wants nothing more than to both let him inside and keep him outside. “Do—Do you need anything? Lin?”

“I… I… I don’t want you to leave,” Linhardt repeats—he can’t seem to come up with anything else to say, can’t pick out any other words in his vocabulary that seem worthy of using. _I don’t want you to leave,_ Linhardt wants to shout, over and over until his throat is raw and scratched— _I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to be like Mother, I don’t want you to die and I don’t want to forget about you—_

“Okay,” Caspar says, so simply that it almost feels like things really are that simple. “I won’t leave, Lin. I’ll stay right here. Do you want anything else?”

Linhardt swallows. Water. He wants—no, _needs_ water, and food, and he needs Mother with him to make everything better, to make everything feel normal and okay and alright again, to make things the way they were before. Why can’t she have stayed— _why couldn’t it have been Father instead—_

“My hair,” Linhardt whispers. “It’s messy. I… Mother always says…” _always says not to let it get too messy, always brushed it for me, always, always…_

“Okay!” Caspar exclaims. “I’ve got just the thing. I’ll slip it under the door so I don’t have to go inside, alright?”

Linhardt’s first thought is that it might be a hairbrush or a comb or something, because that’s the obvious solution to the problem, and the idea of something like that being slipped under the door is just curious enough to push Linhardt into crawling out of the blankets and tottering unsteadily towards the door. Something thin and white is wiggling underneath, and Linhardt presses down on one end to make it easier for Caspar to slide the rest inside. “This…”

“It’s a ribbon!” Caspar proudly declares. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? I nicked it from Mom’s dresser when I heard her say she doesn’t need it anymore. So now, um… if it’s too much trouble to take care of your hair, just tie it all up and it won’t be a problem anymore.”

It’s such a Caspar-esque solution—instead of untangling the knots, just tie it all up. Linhardt looks down at the plain white ribbon, and then at his hair, longer than ever and tumbling down his shoulders, nearly reaching his elbows now. Mother would hate to see him like this—she would grab the nearest hairbrush and swing it like a weapon, but she would always hold him gently after the initial scolding. The wind— _her_ wind—would blow in his hair as she combed it back to neatness.

He grabs the ribbon and gathers his hair up behind him. “Thank you.”

“Huh?”

“Thank you.” Linhardt’s voice wobbles dangerously. “Thank you, Caspar. I… I don’t… I don’t know what to do.” _Don’t leave. Don’t leave._

Caspar is quiet for a moment. “It’s okay not to know what to do,” he eventually says. “You don’t always have to know everything all the time. Just sit and breathe a little while, Lin. You don’t do that a lot anymore.”

“Sit and breathe.” Linhardt inhales shakily, exhales heavily. “Okay. Okay. I will. I…”

The days are cold and long and lonely. Father returns to work not one week after the funeral. Linhardt musters enough strength to come down from his bedroom and attend the tutoring sessions almost a month afterwards. Caspar visits him everyday, sitting outside his room, talking about mundane things and doing his best to make up stories that sound like different children’s books mixed together to form something just incomprehensible enough to be entertaining. Linhardt throws away his hairbrushes and ties his hair every morning instead.

_Do you know these?_ Linhardt asks, one day, in a letter to Caspar when he has to return to Hevring territory a few months later. _They’re called forget-me-nots. Mother grows them near the pond, because they love water._ He plucks a few of the pale blue flowers and presses them into the letter, then spends the rest of the day in silence, staring at the forget-me-nots fluttering in the breeze.

Father dismisses most of the gardeners, save two of the best in their field, but the sheer size of the garden leads to many of the plants wilting anyway. Linhardt watches the Angelica herbs wither and die outside his window, and something tells him to go out, to water them, to take care of them, to give life to them as a healer does.

He draws the curtains and stays in bed.

Being near the sea means Hevring has plenty of rivers to splash in, something Caspar has always used to his fullest advantage whenever Count Bergliez is forced to make a visit for political meetings and Caspar worms his way in the carriage. Linhardt, obviously, hardly minds—he has long given up on trying to keep his clothes clean whenever he goes out with Caspar, and if he’s being honest there’s something therapeutic about seeing all the mud and dirt on the robes Father makes him put on.

On one cloudy day, where no matter how long Linhardt stares at the sky he can’t determine if it’s simply cloudy or a portent of a storm, Caspar (and Count Bergliez, but he’s not important) arrives at the front doorstep with a wide grin on his face. “Linhardt!” he calls. “Let’s go play! If you’re asleep, wake up, it’s the middle of the afternoon!”

Usually Father only gives Linhardt a stern glance to serve as a general warning—don’t go too far out, be back by sundown, stop falling in the river—but today Father stops him at the staircase while Linhardt is pulling on his coat. “I know we are relatively far from the capital,” he says, voice low and nearly inaudible under Count Bergliez’s shouts, “but do be more careful than usual. Strange things have been going on as of late.”

That gives Linhardt pause. Father rarely speaks more than a few sentences to him everyday. “Strange things?”

“A noble family in Enbarr disappeared just recently.” Father glares down at the floorboards. “As you must know by now, I highly disapprove of your friendship with the second son of that barbarian of a man, but I have given up on stopping you. In any case, you had better exercise caution. I will be holding young Caspar accountable for your safety.”

Linhardt resists the urge to sneer—the last time he had done that, Father had talked his ear off about respect and courtesy and etiquette for days on end. “I can take care of myself just fine, thank you,” he says, injecting a bit of Father-esque priss in his voice, and hurries out of the estate and towards Caspar before Father can so much as gasp. “Did you wait long?” Linhardt asks, shutting the doors behind him.

Caspar shakes his head, still grinning. “I got something to show you. And don’t ask what it is! It’s a secret!”

He’s bouncing on his heels as he says this, so Linhardt supposes he’ll find out what this supposed secret is soon enough without needing to ask. He lets Caspar drag him out to one of the many small forests in the county, though one further than usual from the estate.

Linhardt likes the forest. There are always plenty of trees to nap under and plenty of rivers to dip his feet in whenever they get sore or tired, as is the norm when with the ever-energetic Caspar. But he isn’t quite as fond of them when the skies are dark and dreary, moreso when he remembers Caspar’s fear of thunder. “We shouldn’t stay too long,” Linhardt suggests. “It looks like it’ll rain soon, and I know you—”

“I’m _not_ scared of thunder,” Caspar denies before Linhardt can even make the accusation. “Not anymore, anyway! I’m smarter now. Almost all grown up. Being scared of thunder is for babies.”

Linhardt isn’t convinced, but he says, “Alright,” anyway, just to let Caspar feel better about himself. He isn’t believable at all, not when he’s still got the grounding charm Linhardt made him a year ago. “So, what’s this secret? Don’t tell me you’re just going to push me into the river again.”

“You don’t trust me, Lin?” Caspar grins. “Okay, wait here. I’ll be right back!”

“Wait, Cas—”

But Caspar’s already running off, disappearing into the trees. They seem taller than usual, the low-hanging branches like claws ready to snatch up any unsuspecting children.

And now Linhardt’s all alone.

He swallows, takes a step back, rests his back against a tree behind him. There’s no reason to be frightened—the woods aren’t so large, and he doubts Caspar has run far enough that he wouldn’t hear if Linhardt called for him. And yet, there’s _something_ in the air, something that has invisible insects creeping along his arms and something that makes him want to curl in a ball and hide. Perhaps it’s just the darkening sky, but—

Behind him, a twig snaps.

For a very long second, Linhardt can do nothing but stand, frozen, as something drifts into his line of sight—a dark violet haze, like purple fog settling upon the woods. An acrid stench follows, likely intense enough to incapacitate smaller animals.

_Unnatural,_ a voice in Linhardt’s head whispers—his magic, he realizes, wind magic borne from the elements, detecting something far out of its reach. _Artificial. Manmade._

“My,” a voice, dry and cracked as parchment yellowed from the ages, murmurs, “has no one ever told you not to go into the woods all alone, child?”

From the darkness a hunched old man steps out—his skin is pasty white and speckled with dark spots, his head half-bald, and one of his eyes nothing but a pure, pitch black that sends shivers running down Linhardt’s spine. The haze—fog—the _miasma_ encircles him, forming in clumps, and the putrid stench is so overpowering Linhardt almost keels over right there. Probably the only thing keeping him standing is the thought that collapsing now will ensure he never makes it out of the woods alive.

Miasma. Dark magic, he remembers. There had only been one book about it in Enbarr’s grand library, and Linhardt had pored over its contents over and over out of lack of new sources of information. Dark magic, something so deadly and dangerous, that it drew energy from the caster’s own darkness and gave it form, gave it power.

Linhardt had never truly understood the meaning of this until right now, holding his breath to keep the miasma out of his lungs, staring a dark mage right in the eye.

The mage tilts his head. “This feeling… you bear a Crest, do you not? Tell me, child. What is it?”

Should he shake his head? Deny his Crest? Pretend he has a different one? All Linhardt knows is that the absolute last thing he should do in this situation is answer truthfully, because there is no way this man, this _dark mage,_ has his best interests in mind. _There will be people who want to use your Crest for evil,_ Father always says, and maybe that’s why he always keeps such a tight leash on Linhardt whenever he says he’s going to go out with Caspar. Linhardt had always passed it off as Father’s desire to control every little aspect of his life, but now… but now…

“Who are you?” Linhardt manages. His voice quivers, wavers, threatens to break under the slightest pressure.

The mage smiles, a horrifying thing—his teeth are mottled black and yellow, and the skin around his mouth cracks like aged paper. “I believe I asked you a question first, child of Cethleann.”

Fear is a fog, blanketing his thoughts, freezing his blood. Tree bark scratches at Linhardt’s back. The branches overhead stretch out, claws tearing through the cloudy sky. Somewhere, in the distance, thunder rumbles promisingly.

“Lin!” Caspar calls, voice ringing out through the woods. He sounds close, but not close enough to reach where Linhardt is in under a minute. “You’re still there, right? Did you hear that just now? I-I’m not scared, by the way! Just making sure you’re not standing under a tree! Give me one more second, okay?”

“My magic can reach him in an instant,” the mage says, voice low. “If you want your friend alive, do not even think of calling out to him.”

_Dark magic,_ Linhardt imagines reading off the pages of that worn old book. _It draws energy from the caster’s own darkness and gives it form. To be on the receiving end of a dark magic spell almost always results in—_

“What do you want?” Linhardt breathes. His chest is tight, like the bones of his rib cage are closing in on his heart, threatening to pierce straight through the desperately-beating bundle of muscles. “My—My Crest? Money? I—Take whatever you want. Please, don’t h-hurt—don’t hurt—”

“Oh, worry not,” the mage murmurs. The miasma shivers as if in anticipation. “I’ll gladly take you up on that offer, child.”

(Some two minutes later, Caspar, a clump of pale blue flowers in hand, returns to an empty riverside. The rain begins to fall.)

The first thing they do is chain Linhardt down. The second thing they do is bring out a syringe.

“Are you sure about this?” one of them asks. It’s dark, wherever they are—Linhardt thinks it must be an underground dungeon of sorts, largely because of the architecture and the overall dampness. In the darkness, Linhardt has to rely on sound alone to recognize whoever is speaking. There are no windows, either, and so no way to tell the time. “Our last few experiments were largely… unsuccessful. As long as their lifespans remain pitifully short, they serve no purpose to us as weapons.”

“But this one bears a Crest of one of the Four Saints,” the mage from earlier says, his voice alight with some twisted hope. “ _Cethleann’s,_ too. Imagine the benefits of its restorative properties when you combine it with _this._ ” Something flashes in the darkness—the syringe, being brandished by the mage like a weapon.

A pause. “You make a decent point, I suppose. But this is our last chance—this is the only blood sample we were able to salvage from that noble family. If all goes wrong, I suspect this Crest will be lost forever.”

_Noble family?_ Hadn’t Father mentioned one suddenly disappearing recently? Could these people have been involved in…?

A grin. Linhardt is terribly glad he can’t see more than a glint of teeth. “Have some faith.”

One thing Linhardt can’t help but fixate on is that if these people, whoever they are, have the magic to instantly warp them from one place to another, then they almost certainly have the magic to instantly put someone to sleep—and if not the magic, then the concoction for it. Such potions are hardly unheard of, especially in the books Linhardt studied during his brief stint as an aspiring potioneer (quickly ruined when he realized that wasn’t a real occupation, much to his displeasure). Therefore, he reasons, as the mage takes slow, deliberate steps closer to him, surely they would use such magic to do so now. Surely they would at least let him fall unconscious for the duration of whatever they are going to do to him. Surely they wouldn’t be so heartless.

But there is no magic. There is no potion. Linhardt is wide, wide, wide awake when they plunge the syringe into his arm.

For the first time in his life, Linhardt does not sleep.

No, more accurately, he _can not_ sleep. The pain keeps him awake for what feel like weeks on end. There are no windows, and the people that come and go never mention what time or day it is. For all Linhardt knows, he could have been down in this dungeon for a mere hour or an entire month. It is pain that gnaws on his concept of time, pain that chews up his pitiful heart and spits out the bones. Sometimes Linhardt thinks he can hear them clattering onto a plate, as pointless and worthless as the remains of fish and chicken, followed by the clink of cutlery.

They give him meals and water. At first, Linhardt refuses to so much as look at what might be on the tray, but the darkness has refined all his other senses to the point that his nose is all he needs—the first time they offer Daphnel stew, the second time they present cheese gratin, the third time they serve sweet buns. Linhardt devours the plate of the dessert and promptly throws it all back up after an hour. The worst part is that the people, the mages, only chuckle and rub his head as if in fond amusement, and give him more water to wash the acrid taste out of his mouth.

“Are you surprised, child?” the mage from before asks, when Linhardt can’t quite keep himself from shaking under his touch. “Of course we must take care of you. We cannot afford to have you dying because of our mistreatment.”

It’s confusing. It’s frustrating. It’s infuriating. They act so nice, so _normal,_ chatting over their meals and bickering lightly among one another that Linhardt can almost pretend that they _are_ nice. That they _are_ normal.

Of course, it’s when they fall silent that Linhardt is forcibly thrown out of his miserable imagination and remembers: This is where he is. This is what they are doing to him.

After the syringe, they cut his arm open. Linhardt hadn’t looked— _couldn’t_ look—but he imagined he could see it anyway, the blood pouring out of the long wound as they dribbled scalding, burning liquid inside, then stitched his skin back up so haphazardly that small cuts still remained. There is a set time for this, that much Linhardt can tell—they leave him alone while he screams and sobs and passes out from sheer pain, and when he wakes up still hurting all over they will feed him, pat his head, and remind him of who they are all over again.

Somehow they never seem to get the results they want. After enough rounds of these, Linhardt somehow grows used enough to the pain that he stays lucid every now and then after these sessions, and he hears the scratch of quill on parchment. “It isn’t working,” the mage’s partner growls, once. “His Crest restores him each time, but it isn’t _working,_ I _told_ you—”

“Have patience. We are making progress.”

“Do you take me for a fool? All we are doing is bringing this useless subject between two ends of life and death!”

“Exactly,” the mage whispers, something that sounds almost like reverence in his tone. “Can’t you envision it? A weapon who understands what it feels to be on the brink of death and fear nothing, not when his Crest has adapted to these conditions to know exactly what to do to bring him back to perfect health. Undefeatable. _Invincible,_ my dear.”

Silence. Then the sounds of writing again, muted but audible. Linhardt blinks blearily, pushing the pain to the back of his head—lying on his back as he is, he can feel blood seeping into his hair, and for a moment he wonders how he must look. How long has it been since he showered? Changed his clothes? Will he ever be able to do either of those again?

Something glimmers in the darkness. Linhardt’s first thought is a knife, and his second thought is a needle. Instead it’s his Crest, that damned heart-shaped emblem floating above his body, numbing the pain, casting light over both the fresh and dried blood on the floor around him.

The Crest of Cethleann, Linhardt remembers. He has never hated something so much in his life. _You damned Saint,_ he thinks, a spike of fury lighting him up from inside. _How could you? How could you? If not for you, I wouldn’t have this problem. If not for you, I could be back home, I could still be in that forest with Caspar, I could still be a stranger to pain. If not for you—If not for you—_

He can feel it, the anger building and building until he can feel it threatening to overflow, pour out of his throat and fill up the air. Linhardt sees the mage’s grin and how it looks the same as his knife, hears the impersonal scratch of quill on parchment, and wants to make them hurt, wants to make them feel his pain twofold, tenfold, a hundredfold, wants them to teeter off the edge of death then pull them back to the other side and see how they like being undefeatable, _invincible._

Linhardt had promised Mother to use this magic—her magic—for good. But what does it matter? Mother is dead. If Linhardt tries to keep a promise that was always going to be broken, he’s going to wind up just like her, too. He closes his eyes, refusing to look at his Crest any longer, clenches his fist, feels the power gathering in his hand—

“Ah,” the mage says, quietly, “it seems it has begun.”

—flings his arm out, feels his flesh rip and tear under the sudden motion but it doesn’t matter, he has to leave, he needs to leave—

The magic dies before it leaves his fingertips. Something else claws its way out—something pure black, something that fills up the room with its shrieks and screeches until a chair clatters noisily to the floor and the mage’s partner kills the spell with one wave of their arm.

“My,” they say, voice completely devoid of inflection, “now that was quite the spell. Banshee, wasn’t it? If I had moved a moment slower I would most certainly be dead right now.”

Banshee.

Banshee? No. No, that can’t be right. It was a Wind spell. It _had_ to be a Wind spell—it’s the only other magic Linhardt knows, other than Heal. Linhardt’s never even heard of a spell called _Banshee_ before. There’s no such spell. No such magic.

And yet—

The mage steps forward. For some reason Linhardt can see him now, as clear as he had been that day in the forest. Nothing has changed, though Linhardt thinks he’s lost more hair. “Beautiful,” he breathes. He stretches his arm out, caresses Linhardt’s cheek with one gnarly, wrinkled hand. “I can see it. Just a little more, child. How well you’re doing.”

White hot hatred threatens to burn Linhardt’s bones. “Don’t _touch_ me,” he snarls, and tries again—just a bit of wind, just the tiniest bit of it, just to send the mage flying across the dungeon and crashing into the wall, Linhardt wants to snap his spine into a million different pieces and scatter them like fine dust into the ocean—

Again that shrieking entity explodes into existence, screaming and spitting into the air, and again light flashes like stars in Linhardt’s vision. It isn’t the same as when he stands up after sitting for too long and the world spins dizzyingly—no, it’s light, actual _light,_ and the mage is still standing, still breathing, still _smiling_ like he’s never seen anything more breathtaking in his life. “Yes,” he praises, voice thick as poison, “just like that. Look at you, child. Do you see it too? You can see so clearly now, can’t you?”

“What—” Linhardt swallows, tastes something rotten sliding down his throat. “What do you—”

That hand comes back to touch his face, a sharp, dirtied nail dangerously close to his eyes. “I can see it,” the mage whispers again. “Right here, in your left eye. The Crest of Macuil.”

For a long moment, the world slows to a stop.

“Quite the deadly magic you have there,” the mage’s partner says, stepping forward. Linhardt can barely hear their words over the static in his head. “Would you like to know something? It has been three days since we took you in. And throughout those three days, we have not taken our eyes off your precious friend once. What is his name again? Caspar von Bergliez, isn’t it?”

“You promised,” Linhardt chokes out. His voice is a pathetic imitation of how he once sounded. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him. That’s why—That’s why I’m here.”

“We did no such thing.”

Linhardt jerks his head up—in the light only he can see by, the mage’s partner’s features are no less distinguishable than they were in the darkness, dressed as they are in a long cloak that obscures most of their physical appearance. “You said—”

“If you try any of that magic on us again,” they interrupt, voice perfectly flat, “we will not hesitate to bring the two of you together in here. Would you like that? A front-row seat of him screaming and crying.”

The light fades, and darkness comes crashing back, cold arms dragging Linhardt back into blindness. The mage laughs, the sound dry as crackling paper. “We are so close now,” he whispers, carding a hand through Linhardt’s hair. He wants to shake him off, wants to break every single finger and tear those hands off their arms, but all he can do is sit there and stare at the floor, that too-familiar freezing fear replacing the hot anger that had been there not a minute earlier. “So close. Just a little more, and you will reach a level of power previously unprecedented.”

He strokes Linhardt’s head, over and over and over and over. If Linhardt closes his eyes, he might almost be able to pretend it’s just Mother, brushing his hair, getting him ready for the day.

“We have a little gift for you today, child.”

Linhardt keeps his head down, but it’s pointless when the mage’s partner grabs his chin and tilts it up. From the staircase at one corner of the room, the mage descends, and behind him trails another person, this one dressed in rags and filthy from head to toe. His wrists are chained together in the same strange black metal that holds onto Linhardt’s ankles and keeps him from moving too far from the corner of the dungeon. When he lifts his head, sallow, sunken eyes stare daggers into Linhardt’s own.

They push him to stand in front of Linhardt, and for a while no one moves or speaks. Linhardt can barely trust himself to breathe. Finally, the mage claps his hands. “What are you waiting for? Go on. Attack him.”

Linhardt blinks once, slowly. “What…?”

“Your lovely new magic. Use it.” The mage’s partner, the cloaked figure, delivers a swift kick to the ragged man’s side. He chokes and stumbles, falling to his knees and making him nearly eye-level with Linhardt. “You were terribly eager to take your anger out on us just the other day. This here is a lowly slave whose master will not miss. Now hurry up. We haven’t got all day.”

They mean to have Linhardt use his magic on the slave—to _experiment_ on him, just as they did with Linhardt. “I—”

“You know what will happen if you so much as consider refusing.”

Over the days, Linhardt has grown accustomed enough to pain that it hardly bothers him anymore—these men can cut open his arms and legs and face and extract as much of his blood as they want, pour as much of their magic as they will, but in the end it is the knowledge that his Crest, his accursed, wretched Crest, would stitch up his wounds and force him back into dreaded consciousness just for the cycle to repeat over and over again.

The mages would grow tired of it, eventually, and toss him aside to find a new test subject, one more subservient and cooperative, and then Linhardt would be free. He’d probably go mad from the pain, but he would be free to crawl back to Hevring and sleep forever under the covers of his safe, warm bed. Linhardt has gone through this simulation enough times in his mind that sometimes he can almost pretend it’s already happened, and he’ll wake up and realize everything had been just a dream.

But that was before they dropped Caspar’s name in their every threat. Pain is but an old friend; fear never fails to frighten.

He eyes the slave, scans him for any weapons or signs of magical potential. Nothing. There may be no light in his eye to see by, but after being in this darkness for approximately four days by now, if his counting of the hours is correct, then he hardly needs perfect vision anymore.

Linhardt raises his arms. Holds out his hands.

“Wait,” the slave chokes out, “stop—what are you—”

The magic forces itself out of his palms, tearing Linhardt’s skin as it goes and sinking its fangs into the man’s flesh. He screams right alongside the spell, writhing in agony, unable to do anything with his hands bound together—and Linhardt can _hear_ it, can hear every shriek of the Banshee as if it were right beside his face, can hear the man’s heartbeat speeding up, faster and faster and faster until it’s louder than his sobs, louder than the magic, louder than anything Linhardt’s ever heard before—

A wave of an arm, and the magic dissolves into nothing. Linhardt lets his hands drop to his sides, sees the blood from the rips on his palms trickle down his fingers and onto the floor. “Pathetic,” the mage’s partner spits. “You showed much more potent power last time. Where has that gone now?”

“Come now, my dear,” the mage interjects. “You know it was because the Crest manifested then. What must we do for it to activate once more? Shall we anger you again, then, child?”

Something stirs inside Linhardt, dark and hot and boiling with rage. If he isn’t careful it will spring like a snake coiled waiting in the shadows, and giving these people what they want is the last thing Linhardt desires. He wants to be a failure, wants them to treat him like Father, like he’s pointless and useless and worthless and hopeless, a test subject to be thrown away so they can begin experiments on a new one, a better one.

And yet… and yet.

“Again,” the partner commands. Linhardt’s gaze slides slowly back to the slave lying on the stone—he is alive, though barely. Another spell would kill him. “We’ve wasted enough time seeing if the Crest implantation would even work. We can’t afford to waste more training you.”

“I… I…”

Can he do it? No, that isn’t right—of course Linhardt can do it. The magic at his fingertips is made of something pure dark and evil, and it bends flawlessly to his will, so obedient that it’s almost beautiful. Under better circumstances, Linhardt could have studied magic like this for days and weeks on end—even now he’s questioning it at the back of his head like he’s simply testing out a new theory, a new hypothesis, to see why dark magic, infamous for being disloyal, listens to his every beck and call.

The real question is if Linhardt can kill this man and live with his blood on his hands.

“Now, now, there’s no need to be so hasty. We’ve all the time in the world for you, child.” The mage steps closer, placing one of his hands atop Linhardt’s. The snake inside hisses and spits, threatens to inject burning acid straight into the mage’s system. “You know the Heal spell, don’t you? Go ahead and use it on him. You don’t want to kill him just yet, yes?”

_The Heal spell…?_ No, no, something’s wrong, there’s no reason for them to want to keep the slave alive. Is there? Linhardt’s sure he can discern the answer if he only has time to think, but if he hesitates too long—if he displays even the slightest bit of non-compliance—

He holds his arms out again, but this time to cast a shaky Heal spell that hurts Linhardt more than it heals the slave. New cuts open up along his palms as if to replace the ones it fixes up on the man’s body, and his arms tremble in exertion. In the corner of his eye he can see the curling lines of the Crest of Cethleann, illuminating the dungeon in a soft white glow. The spell is perfect, he’d followed every rule in the book—so why does it feel so _wrong?_

“As I thought, the dark magic prevents him from healing as well as he probably could before,” the partner murmurs, seemingly to themselves. “That age-old theory on faith magic originating from the concept of equivalent exchange seems to have weight in this situation. Solon, this could be a massive breakthrough in our research—”

“Silence,” the mage— _Solon,_ finally, a name—orders, and his partner falls quiet, though Linhardt can feel the irritation radiating off them in waves. Then, in a much softer, almost patronizing voice, “Wonderful job, child. Look—you’ve healed him right back to full health.”

So he has. The slave is almost fully recovered now, with only a few scratches here and there. Linhardt swallows—this isn’t right. This isn’t right at all. “Why—”

“Attack him again.”

Linhardt freezes in place. His veins feel like ice, fragile and frightened of the slightest crack. “What…?”

“You heard me.” Solon’s grip on his shoulder tightens, a thinly-veiled threat. “Attack him again. I am sure you need no reminder of what will happen if you refuse to comply.”

The dungeon has never been colder than this. Linhardt lifts his arms again, opens his palms. He wonders, vaguely, how the blood looks on his skin. He knows how it feels, smells, tastes, and he knows the sound a body makes when a wound digs deep enough for blood to spurt out in a fountain, but in the darkness dried blood is as black as night and blends right in.

“No,” the slave whispers, staring up at him. It takes Linhardt a long moment to place a finger on the emotion in his eyes, if only because no one has ever looked at him and felt _fear._ “No, stop—don’t do this—”

The Banshee shrieks again. The man flails, writhes, crumples to the ground. Again the partner waves the spell away before the slave can die. Again Linhardt heals him back to perfect condition, in exchange for the numerous wounds beginning to open up on his own arms. Again Linhardt drives the man to the brink of death, and pulls him right back to life.

He thinks of Caspar, kicking his feet in the river and scaring the fish away. Caspar, showing up at the estate and pulling him out to play.

“ _You monster!_ ” the man wails. “You’re nothing but a beast! A demon! A devil in an angel’s robes!”

Caspar, eyes glimmering in awe when Linhardt’s Crest manifested for the first time. Caspar, slipping a white ribbon under his bedroom door.

“That’s right,” Solon praises, guiding his hands into another Heal spell. There’s no more room on his arms for wounds, and Linhardt feels his legs begin to sting. “Just like that. I can almost see it now, child. Just a little more.”

Caspar, kissing his knee better. Caspar, leading him back home. Caspar, his best friend.

_Caspar, screaming before him as dark magic tears him apart—_

“Enough,” the partner murmurs, disturbing the cycle for the first time. At first Linhardt wonders if he’s finally done it, if he’s grown strong enough to finally kill him in one last spell and put the man out of his misery, but instead the partner says, “More of the same magic would have little effect. The Banshee spell targets a victim’s hearing, but once their eardrums have ruptured, it is left with not much to do. Besides,” they add, lip curling in disdain, “he seems to have gone mad from the pain.”

“A minor setback compared to how well he has grown,” Solon purrs. “Now is an excellent time to add another spell to your repertoire, child. Tell me, do you know of the Nosferatu spell?”

It is not Solon but his partner who teaches him the spell—Linhardt likes that they start off with a brief history of the magic, and then immediately detests both them and himself for knowing exactly what he would like. “Taking an enemy’s life force for your own has always been one of the darkest spells a person could cast,” they say, arms folded over their chest. “Reclassifying it as faith magic, of all things, simply shows the cowardice of humans when it comes to things they want for their own but do not wish to accept as is.”

Linhardt swallows. _I don’t understand,_ he wants to say, but he has only said that phrase exactly once in his life, when he had been sitting across the table from Father and hadn’t yet known knowledge was the one thing Father expected of him. So he nods, and holds his arms out before the slave, lying prone and unmoving on the floor.

“The law of equivalent exchange demands something of equal value must be given before something else can be taken. Nosferatu is a spell that exemplifies such. Give and take.” They nod at the slave. “Cast it. Do not stop until I instruct you to do so.”

For any other person, casting a spell they know almost nothing about would be nigh impossible; for Linhardt, nothing comes more naturally to him than the magic he calls to his hands. It feels even darker than Banshee, perhaps not stronger but several times _hungrier,_ demanding nourishment for every second it gathers in Linhardt’s palms. He directs it to the man, hoping this will be enough to kill him at last—

Power _erupts_ within him, loud and explosive and threatening to tear straight through bone and muscle and flesh—Linhardt stumbles back, the spell flickering dangerously, but Solon grabs his arm and pushes him back to the man. The magic flares back to life, and Linhardt can almost see that snake inside him, wrapping around his victim and squeezing him of his energy, his very _life,_ to give it all to Linhardt. He almost keels over from the overwhelming sensation—when was the last time he felt this strong? Had he _ever_ felt this strong before, this undefeatable, this _invincible?_

The spell peters out before Linhardt can take in much more transferred energy, and though he makes to cast it again, the magic refuses to focus on the man. It takes Linhardt a few long seconds to realize: _ah, he’s dead. I killed him. He’s dead._

_I killed him._

“Very good,” Solon says, stroking his hair, so soft and slow. “If we cannot train you to manifest your second Crest at will, we will simply have to ensure you grow strong enough that added strength will hardly matter. Very good, child… you have far exceeded my expectations.”

And he’s still talking, still speaking, and Linhardt should be listening, but instead there’s only a mantra running through his head, over and over: _I killed him. I killed him. I killed him._

The blood feels so terribly cold on his hands.

On the fifth day, Linhardt learns how to conjure and control Miasma, and he watches as a merchant chokes on the violet haze Linhardt sends directly into his lungs. On the sixth day, Linhardt learns how to cast Mire, and he listens to the last beats of a bandit’s heart before the sludge wrapped around it squeezes tight and has it explode within his chest.

On the seventh day, Linhardt waits. Watches.

He had passed out from exhaustion the first time, but over the last two days he had stayed conscious, if barely, and paid careful attention to his surroundings. The mages would speak with one another, obviously, discussing the results of the latest experiment using long, complicated words even Linhardt couldn’t understand. and speaking too fast to follow in general. But the most important part was that Solon would leave for several hours afterwards, and Linhardt would be alone with his partner in the dungeon.

If he estimates correctly, he still has a few hours before Solon returns with a new victim for Linhardt to torture. Linhardt had given himself time to recover after the bandit, and though he still doesn’t feel quite ready to run for his life, he supposes he never really feels ready to run for his life anyway, and this is as good as he’s going to get.

So far he hasn’t been able to cast a Wind spell—he’s been trying, calling on the magic behind his back when he can muster the strength to, but it refuses to come. Most likely it’s because they’re underground, or the dungeon is so enclosed that barely any natural wind comes through. But Linhardt has seen how easily Solon’s partner dispels dark magic—trying to attack him with Banshee would be ineffective, not to mention terribly unsubtle.

And Linhardt knows he only has one chance with this, because if he fails, they have very little reason to leave Caspar alone.

He can’t hesitate—the slightest pause, the shortest falter, and Linhardt would be wishing he had been reduced to a stain on the wall instead of whatever they have planned for Caspar. So he bides his time, waits a little longer, calculates for the perfect opportunity like a snake hiding in the tall grass. He can do this—he _has_ to do this.

He waits for when Solon’s partner stands, the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor hiding the _click_ his chains make when he uses a slip of leftover mire to open the lock. He stares into the darkness, following the outline of that flowing cloak and waiting for when they turn their back on him. Linhardt stands, takes a step forward, and another, and another.

And at the last second, when they make to turn back around, Linhardt casts a Wind spell to blow them against the wall—

Or tries to, anyway, and fails completely as they wave their hand without even looking and the Miasma evaporates into thin air.

_Miasma?_ No, Linhardt had called on Wind, he knows it, he _knows_ his magic. Ever since Mother had first taught him the Heal and Wind spells, his magic has felt like an extension of himself, a fifth limb, something he could control freely and at will, something that answered when it was called. He knows his magic. He knows his magic, and yet, _and yet—_

“You are not as subtle as you might have thought,” the partner says, sounding almost bored. “Are you really as smart as they say the heir of Hevring is? Only a fool would try attacking a dark mage with dark magic.”

“N-No—I—”

“Try this again and it will be death,” they tell him. “I am not nearly as patient with you as that old fool. For now, I’ll settle for breaking your little friend.”

Linhardt’s blood runs cold. “No—”

He sees them raise their arm, fingers beginning to twist into the gesture they use for communication—

“No, I—I’m sorry! I won’t do it again! Please, no, not him, not him, stop it—stop—”

Caspar, bleeding from his ears, gone mad from the pain—Caspar, choking on hazy purple smog, miasma leaking from his eyes—Caspar, veins injected with mire and sludge until his body explodes from the inside out, insides and organs splattering on the walls of the dungeon in a display Solon would call a _work of art—_

“ _Stop it!_ ”

Light burns across his eyes like exploding suns, but Linhardt still hears it more than he sees it: the _crack-snap_ of all ten of the person’s fingers breaking.

For the one week Linhardt had been trapped in this dungeon, not once had he heard the cloaked figure raise their voice any louder than an irritated snap—they had been the cold, calm logic to Solon’s almost fanatic hope for Linhardt’s growth and development into the perfect weapon, or whatever it is he spoke about. Even now, with their hands rendered useless, they barely do more but wince and retreat, the action almost certainly on instinct, and somehow this absolutely _infuriates_ Linhardt. _He_ had sobbed until his tears ran dry. _He_ had screamed his throat raw. _He_ had thrashed on the stone floor, splashing in puddles of his own blood, choking up dark black clots that _wriggled_ like worms.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that only he had suffered, that only he had gone through all that. Why can’t _they?_

“Fool,” they growl, and for a moment a cold spike of fear embeds itself in Linhardt’s anger. “Do you want your friend to die that badly?”

It isn’t fair. Linhardt hadn’t known this would happen when they went out that day, and neither had Caspar, and neither had Father. No one had known. It isn’t fair. What did Linhardt do to deserve this? Be born with some special blood he’s spilled all over the dungeon floor by now? For that matter, what did _Caspar_ do to deserve this? It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.

Linhardt doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think, barely even looks at the person—he keeps his gaze locked on the ground, even if the light shining in his eyes is almost blinding by now. He lifts his arms up, slow enough that he wonders why the mage hasn’t killed him by now, and casts the spell they had so kindly taught him.

_The Crest of Macuil,_ Solon had called it. Linhardt had skimmed through some texts on Crests before, notably those existing within the Empire in order to learn more of his fellow nobles, but of the other Saints he had only found extensive information on the Crests of Indech and Cichol, from House Varley and Aegir respectively. Macuil’s Crest belonged to a small noble family that preferred to stay out of politics and the public eye. Their bloodline is the only one known to carry such a Crest.

_This is our last chance—this is the only blood sample we were able to salvage from that noble family. If all goes wrong, I suspect this Crest will be lost forever._

Perhaps, Linhardt thinks, staring down at the body writhing in pain before him, it would be more accurate to say that their bloodline _was_ the only one. Now he carries _their_ blood. _Their_ Crest.

Power floods his body the same way it had when he first cast Nosferatu—but this time he feels several times stronger, and the person crumples to the ground, coughing dark black blood. They wave their arm weakly as if to dispel the magic, just as they’d done several times before, flaunting their strength, showing Linhardt just how _weak_ and _insignificant_ he is compared to them, and—there’s that anger again, white-hot and all-encompassing, threatening to overflow and spill out of his chest.

And why not? What would Linhardt lose? He grabs that fiery ball of anger and hurls it out, tells his magic _here, try this,_ and for the first time Linhardt sees it—the Crest of Macuil, hovering in the air, illuminating the dungeon in a sharp, blinding-bright light so starkly different from Cethleann’s soft glow.

Linhardt drops the spell as soon as he feels the mage’s energy wavering. “Call them off.”

“What?” they choke out, voice raw and broken. _Good,_ some sick voice in Linhardt’s head whispers. _They deserve it. Now it’s equal._

“The—The people you have on Caspar. My friend. Call them off now.”

They sneer, a terrible thing considering how their facial features have been so terribly distorted that Linhardt dearly wishes he hadn’t been looking at them. “Do you really think,” they cough, “that you can run away from us forever?”

“I—”

“Dark magic has a scent. A trail. We—” They cough again, more blood splattering onto the floor, drops landing on Linhardt’s feet. “We will not forget you. We _cannot_ forget you.”

Linhardt makes a grab for that magic again, and it seems to hum in delight at his fingertips. “Call them off _now._ ” And, when they only chuckle again, a terrifying sound that bounces off the walls of the dungeon, Linhardt lets the magic wrap its claws around their entire right arm and twist their broken fingers into what he remembers the gesture for communication vaguely looks like. “Do it! Or… Or…”

“Or what?” they taunt. Blood drips down their chin. “Will you kill me?”

Linhardt’s heart is beating, fast as a fleeing fawn, but he says, “Yes,” like he means it anyway. And, once again for the first time, he sees them hesitate, the cool, all-knowing expression on their face chipping away to reveal how their thoughts must be faltering. “Yes,” Linhardt repeats, firmer, because if he lets his voice wobble now then he’ll never get out of this place alive. “I can. I will.”

“You…” They fall silent, then shake their head. Their fingers crack and their face twitches in pain, but finally they speak, hand glowing faintly with violet magic: “Kronya, drop it. We don’t need him anymore.” A pause. “Yes, I am sure. Return to base fast as you can.”

“How do I know that wasn’t a trick?” Linhardt asks the instant their magic fades.

They stare up at him. Now that the hood of their cloak has finally fallen off their face and the light from Macuil’s Crest still remains, Linhardt can see every detail of the previously-mysterious figure: their appearance, like Solon’s, seems to have been corrupted by dark magic, skin wrinkled and pale as death, only handfuls of hair remaining on their head. Only their voice sounds somewhat normal—almost _young._ “Solon was right.”

“What…?”

They reach out with one shaky hand. “You’ve grown into a fine weapon.”

Linhardt’s not sure if he issues the command or if the magic had acted of its own accord, but in one instant the person is alive—in the next the Nosferatu spell has bitten down on them once more, drawing only the shortest of screams before the last of their life force is sucked away. Linhardt stumbles back from the brief burst of energy that returns to him—if Cethleann’s Crest hadn’t naturally healed him before, the sheer amount of power he had taken from this mage would have brought him straight back to full health.

No—not power, not quite. Linhardt had literally stolen the person’s life away from them.

He hadn’t been forced into killing this time. Solon hadn’t been by his shoulder, guiding him from one spell to another, and if this person is to be believed, Caspar’s life was no longer on the line. They had been on the brink of death after the initial Nosferatu spell, and Linhardt highly doubted they would have been capable of standing, much less chasing after him if he decided to escape.

And he could have done that. He could have. He should have.

But he hadn’t.

Linhardt takes a step back. Then another. Then another.

He turns around and runs.

The dungeon isn’t a dungeon at all, but rather a basement of some dingy cottage that Linhardt rockets up the stairs of, nearly knocking straight into the wall on the opposite end. He doesn’t think he’s ever run this fast in his life, and he highly doubts he would _be_ able to run this fast if he hadn’t taken the mage’s energy— _no, no, don’t think about that._ There isn’t anyone else in the cottage and the furniture is sparse, so he figures it might be a safe house of sorts, not the ‘base’ the person had mentioned during their brief conversation. There shouldn’t be any risk of running into whoever the Kronya person is. But Solon—

Linhardt freezes—after only smelling the metallic scent of blood and the stench of rotting corpses in the basement, the rest of the cottage is refreshingly clean, with only hints of dark magic in the corners. But even with the windows closed and the door shut, he can smell it—miasma, coming closer and closer.

_No._ Not now. Not when he’s so close.

He barrels towards the back of the house, relief filling his lungs when he throws a door open and tumbles out into a small, empty field that is most likely meant for a garden—and for a moment he stares, transfixed, at the rest of the world before him.

He doesn’t recognize his surroundings, but he hadn’t expected to emerge right back into the streets of Enbarr or the mountains of Hevring anyway. What is more important right now is that the sun is rising over the horizon, bathing the fields in warm golden light—the grass is under his feet, soft and damp with morning dew—there is birdsong in the distance, and the loud crow of a rooster even further away.

Outside. He is outside.

Too soon the smell of miasma begins to strengthen, and Linhardt pulls himself back together, racing through the long, empty fields behind the cottage. Sharp rocks cut his feet open, and he stumbles and falls more than once, scratching his arms and face on sticks and gravel, but nothing matters more than running, as fast and as far away from the rapidly-shrinking house behind him.

Something tells him to look back, to get one last glance of the place he had spent one long, harrowing week in. Linhardt does not listen. There is nothing behind him to see, and he keeps his eyes forward.

On the eighth day of being away from home, and the first day of being away from _them,_ Linhardt wakes up beside a river.

No, not just any river—he recognizes it from the geography, the mountains on either side of it. He’s not sure for how long he had run for, but when the last of his stolen strength left him, he had dragged himself beneath a bush that wasn’t as thorny as the others around it and curled up in a ball before passing out. He most certainly does not remember collapsing next to the Airmid River instead. He most certainly does not remember wearing clean, fresh clothes that smell like leaves and soil.

And, when Linhardt looks to his left, he also most certainly _does not_ remember meeting the blue-haired boy sitting by the riverbank, a fishing rod in his hands.

Calling on the magic barely requires thought anymore, only a burst of panic to send the darkness rushing to wrap around his hands. “Who are you?” he shouts, loud enough that a pair of birds perched upon a nearby tree take frightened flight. “Did—Did you bring me here? Are you one of them?”

“Good morning,” is all the boy says. He doesn’t even bother looking up from where the water around his fishing bait is beginning to bubble. “Would you mind waiting a moment? And stay quiet, please.”

Common sense screams at Linhardt to cast a spell already, any spell as long as it would incapacitate the boy long enough for Linhardt to get a few answers out of him before he starts running again. But maybe it’s the fishing rod, or the lack of darkness Linhardt can smell on him, or the serene expression on the boy’s face, because Linhardt can only sink back down to the grass, unaware he had even stood.

The fishing line goes taut, and the boy’s arms tense. He reels the fish in barely a moment later, and Linhardt watches, trying not to let his surprise distract him from his wariness. The boy looks a little older than him—three years? Four? Surely _those people_ wouldn’t have a member so young.

“Okay,” the boy says, snapping Linhardt out of his thoughts. “What were you asking, again?”

The fish he caught is an Airmid pike, instantly recognizable after all the time Linhardt had spent poring over his fish encyclopedias back home. He rarely ever found species in the rivers back in Hevring—he usually only caught white trout and the occasional carassius, but he thinks that may be because Caspar is usually always so loud that he scares all the other fish away.

Caspar… is he safe? Is he really safe now? Or had everything back there been a bluff, and this Kronya person has already gone ahead and killed him? A knife in his back, a dagger in his throat, dark magic eating away at his insides? Could his body be rotting away somewhere, perhaps in the woods Linhardt had disappeared in?

“Hey,” the boy says again, stepping closer. He’s cleaned the fish and tossed it into the icebox at his side. “You okay? I found you in a bush. Its leaves were poisonous, but it’s pretty weak, so water counteracts it well. That’s why you’re here.” He pauses, fishing rod resting against his shoulder. “And you were all bloody, so you’re wearing my extra clothes. Yours are drying over there.” He gestures vaguely behind him. “By the way, the blisters on your feet should be okay now, so you can take those off if you like. But I suggest wearing shoes when you go out next time.”

Linhardt looks down at his bare feet—they’re wrapped half in bandages and half in leaves, likely because of a shortage of supplies out in the wilderness. The clothes are loose and baggy, but so terribly soft and warm, and when he inhales it isn’t miasma or mire or blood or bodies but tree leaves and fresh, earthy soil that Mother would have loved to plant her flowers in. His hair is still damp, too, stray strands clinging wetly to his forehead and the back of his neck. When he reaches above him he can feel Caspar’s silk ribbon tied haphazardly around his head as if in a headband.

“I want…”

The boy blinks. “Yes?”

Linhardt clutches at the hem of his borrowed shirt so hard, his nails threaten to rip through the fabric. “I want to go home…”

The boy’s name is Byleth. He is a mercenary. In the past, Linhardt would have been speechless at the way he could kill so quickly, so easily—now, he can only wonder what Byleth would say if he knew what Linhardt has done.

He is a member of a band of traveling mercenaries—the son of the leader, in fact. They had been passing by the area when they stopped for the night, and Byleth was scouring for fruits and herbs to harvest when he stumbled upon Linhardt in that traitorous poisonous bush. He hadn’t been injured enough to require a healer’s attention, so Byleth had soaked him in the river and bandaged his feet. That was that.

“So you’re from Hevring, huh?” Byleth’s father, Jeralt, grunts. Byleth is sitting next to him on the floor of the tent, peering at a map, but Jeralt doesn’t need to look at it before speaking again. “It’s a bit far from here, ‘round a week by carriage. If you want, we could drop you off in one of the nearby territories here, and you can write your folks a letter to pick you up.”

The thought of being alone again, so close and so soon after escaping from those people, has Linhardt rigid with fear. Evidently Byleth notices, because he looks away from the map and wordlessly stares up at his father.

Jeralt sighs. “Alright, fine,” he grumbles. Linhardt’s not sure what he’s talking about, since Byleth hadn’t spoken a word, or even changed his facial expression. “How ‘bout Bergliez? It’s just across Gronder Field, won’t take more than a day to cross, and then you should be safe in Fort Merceus. We’ll stay with you ‘til someone comes for you.”

_Bergliez!_ Byleth hands over the map like he’d been expecting it and Linhardt eagerly takes the worn parchment in his hands. They’re right—Hevring is all the way on the other side of the Empire, not to mention surrounded by mountain ranges Linhardt is only all too familiar with. Jeralt mentioned their next job is in the Leicester region, too, so a detour to Enbarr would take up far too much of their time.

More importantly, Count Bergliez knows him. He may not adore Linhardt or anything close to that, but he wouldn’t turn him away. And most importantly, Caspar might be there.

“Looks like you’re good,” Jeralt remarks. Byleth takes the map back, folding it up in careful squares before sliding it into a pocket of a worn rucksack. “Mind you, we don’t do carriages, so you’ll have to keep up. Let’s finish lunch up here and we can get going.”

“Okay,” Linhardt whispers, the first word he’s said to Jeralt since they met. Jeralt doesn’t seem to have even heard him, shoveling food into his mouth as he is, Byleth doing exactly the same.

“Thank you,” he adds, softly, trying and failing to keep his tears from running down his face.

Jeralt brings Byleth and two other mercenaries along, leaving the rest to head on to Leicester without them, before they begin the trek across Gronder Field. It’s a hot summer day—Linhardt can’t keep his eyes off the sky for too long, because he had gone almost an entire week without sunlight, and he had never quite realized just how good it feels (right before his skin starts burning up, anyway). Jeralt and the two mercenaries lead the way, chatting idly with each other, while Byleth keeps pace next to Linhardt’s slower trudge.

“I’ve never seen hair like yours before,” Byleth suddenly comments.

It reminds Linhardt of the first thing Caspar had ever said to him, and the memory makes his heart twist in his chest. “I suppose most mercenaries keep their hair short for convenience.”

“That’s not…” Byleth trails off, then shrugs, as if explaining himself would be too much trouble. “Were you attacked? There was blood all over you and your clothes.”

Linhardt tugs at the straps of his string pack. The mercenaries were planning to throw it away since there was a giant hole that was too big to patch up, but Linhardt managed to fashion it to serve as a string pack after growing restless enough, so they let him keep it and use it to hold onto his clothes, especially after Byleth firmly shook his head when Linhardt made to return his borrowed attire. Even now he’s wearing a pair of Byleth’s boots, the back of which keep threatening to fall off with each step he takes. “It’s…”

Byleth waits patiently for a moment, then says, “Well, it’s okay if you’d rather not talk about it.” And he falls silent again, gaze fixed ahead of him, now clearly only thinking about getting to Bergliez.

For a moment Linhardt’s relieved, but it feels wrong—he owes this much to Byleth, at the very least. “It isn’t mine.”

“Mm?”

“The blood. It isn’t mine.”

“Mm,” Byleth says again. “I see.”

“…You don’t care?” Linhardt ventures.

“We’re mercenaries,” Byleth reminds him. As if Linhardt needs the reminder, really. “Killing is a part of life. You don’t seem like you would have killed for fun, so I assume it was for a reason as good as ours.” He shrugs. “Don’t worry about it anymore. You’re going home.”

_Home._ It seems so far away still, and maybe it is—maybe a part of Linhardt will always be there, in the basement of that lone cottage isolated atop a hill, lying dead on the floor next to all the men he had killed over the span of a mere four days. Maybe there will always be something missing from him, no matter how much time passes from now into the future. Maybe he’ll never be able to wash the blood out of his hands, no matter how long he spends in the river.

“Yes,” Linhardt mumbles. “Home.”

As he had half-expected, Linhardt’s legs start wobbling after half an hour, and he nearly topples over a few minutes later, so one of the mercenaries relents and carries him on his back. Linhardt can’t say he’s ever been carried like this in his life, and it’s rather embarrassing considering they start treating him even more like a kid afterwards, but he can’t deny it feels… nice, too, to be cared for even in ways as small as this.

They cross Gronder Field that night and reach Fort Merceus, the capital of Bergliez, at noon the next day. The city is just as he remembers it, fortified to the point that getting inside takes almost an entire hour, but bustling with business and activity as soon as they step inside. The mercenary who had carried him yesterday whistles. “Wanna go get some food first, boss?”

Jeralt glances down at Linhardt. “You three can go ahead. I’ll look for someone who can—”

“I’m coming,” Byleth interrupts, using a voice that leaves very little room for argument.

“Just you two, then,” Jeralt amends, rolling his eyes at the two mercenaries already beginning to wander off in the direction of the restaurants. “Have a date or something. Alright, kid, you know anyone in here? Or should we go right up to the post office?”

“Count Bergliez,” Linhardt answers. He’s been in Fort Merceus a few times, usually to run around and play with Caspar, so the general layout of the city isn’t too hard to remember. “His office should be down there. I-I can—there’s no need to trouble yourself. Please, you’ve done more than enough. I…” He swallows. “I can’t begin to thank you all.”

Jeralt smacks his back, and Linhardt tries his absolute best not to fall flat on his face. “Hey, no sweat. Come on, let’s get you to… wait.” He frowns. “Count Bergliez?”

“Ah.” Should Linhardt tell them his name and identity? It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but he also doesn’t want them to suddenly treat him like a stranger because of his noble status. “He’s the best friend of my father,” he explains. It isn’t a lie, anyway.

Whatever caution Linhardt may have tried to exercise becomes completely useless the instant Count Bergliez flings his door open and grabs Linhardt by the shoulders in a death grip that has his bones creaking. “ _Linhardt,_ boy!” he bellows, loud enough that Linhardt’s sure the entire street hears him. Jeralt actually stumbles back, and Byleth blinks slowly like he’s not quite sure what he’s looking at. “Is it you? Is it really you!?”

“Uncle—”

“Where have you _been?_ You were missing for over a week! And what happened to your hair?”

Linhardt silently thanks Count Bergliez for announcing his situation to, once again, the entire street and perhaps more. People are beginning to gather, despite how the citizens of Fort Merceus are apparently known for being used to the Count’s frequent outbursts. “I… I can explain, but—”

Count Bergliez’s grip on his shoulders tighten further, and Linhardt winces—there are going to be bruises there come tomorrow morning, if Cethleann’s Crest doesn’t activate on its own first. “We’re getting you back to Hevring right now,” the Count declares. “Your old man’s been worried sick. He would’ve had to remarry for a new heir if you never came back.”

Linhardt’s hands falter at his sides. Behind him, he feels more than he sees Jeralt’s tension and Byleth’s frown. “A new heir…?”

“You disappeared without a trace, boy!” Count Bergliez shakes his head. “Searched everywhere, we did, but when there still weren’t any signs after a week, it wasn’t looking so good. And now you come back with… a couple of, what, commoners? Don’t tell me ya ran away from home for fun.”

There’s a familiar heat beginning to burn inside him, flames licking at his bones, singeing his lungs. Linhardt takes a deep breath and prays, desperately, that unnatural light will not suddenly flicker in his eyes. “I promise I can explain _later,_ so please, can I… can I see Caspar?” His voice cracks, embarrassing and humiliating, but he can’t bring himself to care. Count Bergliez doesn’t seem like he had recently been mourning or grieving, but at the same time Linhardt knows more than anyone else how much less loved Caspar is as a second son. If he’s died—if he’s dead—would Count Bergliez be unworried because he still has his firstborn, still has his heir?

“Caspar? He’s at our estate,” Count Bergliez says, and Linhardt doesn’t register anything he says after that, because he falls hard on the rough stone in relief. His knees scrape against the ground, and the chafed skin around his ankles twinge in pain, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care about anything aside from the fact that Caspar is alive. Safe and well and _alive._

This hadn’t all been for nothing. Linhardt swallows thickly, lets the tears fall freely down his face. The pain, the Crest, the magic, the killing. It hadn’t all been for nothing. Caspar is alive.

Byleth steps closer, unexpectedly enough, holding out a hand for Linhardt to take. “Alright?” he mumbles.

Linhardt nods, letting Byleth pull him back up to his feet, however unsteadily—Count Bergliez gives Byleth a cursory glance, his gaze lingering on Jeralt instead. “You a sellsword?” he says, tone curt. “Thanks for bringin’ him back, I guess. You want compensation?”

Jeralt makes direct eye contact with Count Bergliez then, of all things, pointedly looks away to meet Linhardt’s eyes instead, as if making very sure Count Bergliez _knows_ he’s being ignored. “You sure you’ll be fine from here on, kid?” he asks, coming closer just to ruffle Linhardt’s hair and nearly undoing the ribbon-headband Byleth had tied for him. “You can always reach us with a letter if you need anything.”

The magic of messenger owls has always eluded Linhardt, in part due to the pitiful amount of available research on the topic. He swallows and nods, reluctant to let go of Byleth’s hand. When was the last time he had held a warm living person? “When I get back home, I’ll write. I promise.”

Byleth gives Linhardt another once-over. He’s several inches taller, which makes it easy for him to reach up and adjust the ribbon-headband. “Be safe,” he says, both expression and tone perfectly neutral, then returns to his father’s side. Jeralt gives Linhardt a wave goodbye (and Count Bergliez a scowl) before they walk back into the streets of Fort Merceus, disappearing into the crowd in just under a minute. Linhardt stares at the citizens rushing to and fro, appearing and disappearing and never for him to see again, and wonders if Jeralt and Byleth had become just that.

“Come on, boy,” Count Bergliez says, ushering Linhardt into his office. “I’ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do today. It’ll take a week at least for your old man to get here from Hevring, so ye’re free to stay with Caspar at the estate if ye like.”

Being with Caspar after so long without him—after living everyday not knowing if he was alive or dead, if they were only using his name to threaten him into submission—sounds like a dream. Linhardt nods again, not trusting himself to speak, and accepts the quill and parchment Count Bergliez hands him once they step inside his office. “Make sure ye apologize to yer old man!” he shouts, the walls rattling from his voice. “Must’ve lost a good chunk of his hair worryin’ over ya!”

Linhardt’s sorely tempted to scoff. _Worrying_ he can understand, but he highly doubts Father was worried about _him,_ specifically. No, more likely he was worried about having to find a new wife to sire a new heir and live a new life after the disappearance of his only son.

What a smear upon his immaculate reputation that would have been, Linhardt thinks, as he sets quill to paper.

For a very short, very brief moment, he almost wishes he _is_ gone forever. That Byleth had never found him and left him to die in that poisonous bush. That he hadn’t escaped the house before Solon arrived and he was tortured to death as punishment. That he hadn’t thought to escape at all and he’s still with those dark mages now, slowly learning his place among them. Why would any of that mean _Linhardt_ is the one supposed to apologize? How would any of that be _his_ fault?

But he thinks of Caspar, of his sunshine-blue eyes and the way the mages had threatened to snuff out that light if Linhardt dared step out of line, and his thoughts slow to a stop.

_Dear Father,_

_I am well. Forgive me for worrying you over my disappearance…_

“Father!” Caspar shouts at what sounds like the very top of his lungs the instant the doors of the Bergliez estate creak open. Linhardt barely gets a chance to recover from his yell before he’s barreling down the stairs, taking them three at a time despite them being far too steep for his short legs, and shouting as he runs. “Father, was there any news today? I heard something happened in Fort—”

He skids to a stop at the front entrance, eyes widening several times their regular size. “L… Lin…?”

Linhardt had told himself not to cry and to stay as calm and composed as possible, because the absolute last thing he wants to do is worry Caspar, but right away he can tell this is a lost cause. His eyes are heating up again, too fast to restrain, and he doesn’t bother waiting for Count Bergliez to explain anything before stumbling over to Caspar and sinking into his arms. “Caspar,” Linhardt whimpers. “Cas—Cas—I missed you, m-missed you so much—”

“W-Whoa, I…” Caspar sounds like he means to say more, but then his arms come to wrap around Linhardt’s back, and he’s warm and soft and reassuring and comforting and so so so _alive,_ Linhardt can’t believe he thought he could see Caspar again and not cry. “It’s okay, Lin,” he whispers, rubbing Linhardt’s back. “It’s okay. Just… let’s get you somewhere else.”

“Boys,” Count Bergliez says warningly, but either Caspar somehow doesn’t hear him or plain does not care, because he turns around, helps Linhardt stand up and walk, and leads him back up the stairs and towards the general direction of his bedroom.

Caspar’s room is smaller than Linhardt’s but no less messy—he kicks various trash out of the way, clearing a path to the bed that Linhardt immediately crashes on. Soft blankets, soft pillows, soft mattress… it’s a far cry from the cold, hard, bloodied stone basement floor. “You need anything, Lin?” Caspar asks, climbing up to sit next to him on the bed. “Are you hungry? Uh… um… you need the toilet or…?”

Linhardt shakes his head. “You.”

“What?”

“Just need you.” Linhardt sits up and buries his face in Caspar’s chest for another hug. He had never hugged Caspar much before this, partly because physical contact always felt so foreign after going so long without it, especially after Mother passed. But now it’s the only thing he wants to do for the rest of his life—he wants to hug Caspar, wants to keep him close, wants to know he’ll always be safe and alright and _alive._

When he looks up, Caspar’s cheeks are bright red. Linhardt doesn’t think he sees Caspar embarrassed all that often, and seeing him like this is only all too endearing. “T-That’s… You’re real sappy today, huh, Lin? I mean, I-I guess that’s expected though. Just… where did you go?” he asks, voice dipping into something softer, on the off chance that there might be anyone listening outside the door. Linhardt appreciates it—Caspar’s always been smarter in the things that matter, much as Linhardt’s pride hates to admit it.

Linhardt stares down at the sheets. They’ve been in the room for less than five minutes, but already they’ve made a mess of the bed. Just the thought of sharing it with Caspar later when they sleep, like this is just a regular sleepover that will last for the rest of the week, has his heart lightening. “I was… taken… somewhere.”

“Kidnapped?” Caspar whisper-shouts. “You were kidnapped, Lin!?”

Linhardt nods. “They…”

_They cut my flesh open and turned me into a weapon. They taught me magic that infects and sickens and eats and kills. They brought people in for me to push to the brink of death then heal back up so I could torture them again until they finally died. Two days ago I murdered my captor when I didn’t have to. And I did it for you. I suffered for you. I killed for you. I did it for you. I did it for you. If I had to do it all over again again—if they threatened me with you again—_

Caspar shifts, the bed dipping under the motion, and Linhardt blinks back into the present. Even now he can smell the miasma on himself, the mire clinging to his skin. “They… what?”

Linhardt shakes his head. “I can’t say,” he breathes, too terrified to raise his voice any louder. “Just—It’s just—I’m okay now.” He isn’t. “I just need you. Please, Cas? Can you promise that we’ll… that you’ll never leave me?”

Linhardt had expected a short, confused pause, or Caspar wondering aloud if Linhardt had hit his head for him to become like this. But there’s no hesitance, no faltering, just a firm, confident, “Duh!” and arms around his middle again as Caspar squeezes him tight. “I _told_ you already, we’re best friends. Best friends don’t leave each other without a good reason. You don’t have to tell me what happened if you don’t wanna, but just know that I’ll always, like, be here if you wanna talk about it, okay?”

“Yeah,” Linhardt mumbles. He can’t seem to bring himself to let go of Caspar. He doesn’t particularly want to. “Thank… Thank you. Thank you. So much, Caspar. I…”

_Best friends don’t leave each other… without a good reason._ What reason would be good enough for Caspar? Having two Crests? Knowing dark magic?

Being a murderer?

Caspar helps pull Linhardt off the bed, steadying him on his trembling legs. “‘Course, Lin. But it’s late—you should use the bathroom and stuff, and then you can sleep. I bet you haven’t slept right in days! So don’t worry about thanking me or saying anything or whatever, alright?”

“You trust me?” Linhardt mumbles, still holding onto the hem of Caspar’s shirt with one hand. “Just like that?” Even if he didn’t fear Caspar’s reaction to what had happened to Linhardt—what Linhardt had _done—_ just knowing about the dark mages and their existence might be dangerous. What if he accidentally lets slip about his knowledge, and the dark mages come back to hunt him down and keep him from spilling their secrets? What if? What if? They’re only all too capable of finding them again.

_Dark magic has a scent,_ the mage had said, just seconds before Linhardt had killed him. _We will not forget you. We cannot forget you._

“Lin, come on.” Caspar takes his hand and grips it tight—not in the way Solon had held him, sweet and placating and a complete facade, and not in the way Count Bergliez had grabbed him, forceful and controlling and how Linhardt imagines Father’s hand might feel like. No, Caspar’s is—tight, yes, and firm, but so comforting and reassuring and everything Linhardt had needed throughout the past several days.

Comforting. Reassuring. Alive. Alive. _Alive._

“I know you, okay?” Caspar continues. He’s stroking Linhardt’s hair, untangling the multitude of knots. “There’s definitely a reason you can’t tell me, and I won’t force you. I’m just glad you’re back. I…” He swallows, sniffles, and it’s only now that Linhardt realizes his eyes are glimmering with tears. “I missed you too. When you disappeared, I… I thought it was my fault, ‘cause I was the one who brought you out that day, and—and I was the one who left you all alone in the forest too, like a total _idiot,_ and—I just—I was so scared, I thought…”

“I’m here.” Linhardt looks down at Caspar’s hand—at their hands, more like. “I’m here. You’re right. It… It’s okay now. I’m just glad…” _glad you’re alive, glad you’re alive, glad you’re alive._ “Glad I’m back, too.”

_You don’t know me,_ Linhardt’s mind screams. _You don’t know a single thing about me._

Caspar grins shakily. “Yeah. Yeah… I guess whatever happened to you has something to do with your hair, right?”

That gives Linhardt pause. “My hair…?” Byleth had mentioned something similar, and Count Bergliez had shouted a question about it too. Is there matted blood sticking the strands together? Or is it just ridiculously messy? He pulls away from Caspar, missing his warmth almost immediately, to totter over to a nearby mirror.

For a long, cruel moment, he almost mistakes the white of his hair as a part of his skin.

It is Imperial Year 1175. Linhardt von Hevring is twelve years old. In a kinder world, he would have been sixteen when he first killed. In this one, the silk ribbon tied around his hair is stained black-red with the blood of his victims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [art by grey!!](https://twitter.com/almyranpine/status/1293877836562886658) ah, to be young and only have one (1) crest  
> \- [art by mik!!](https://twitter.com/froggiecafe/status/1309168637157224457) he's just a little boy 🥺 (TW: blood)  
> \- lin's short kiss-it-better monologue near the beginning came from [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2r1g7t/where_did_the_idea_of_kissing_a_booboo_better/)  
> \- “what do you _mean_ [the crest of macuil exists in the empire](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Edelgard/Supports#B_Support_13)!?”  
> \- [this concept art](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Linhardt/Gallery?file=Linhardt_concept.png), particularly the second head, is where i got the idea of the crest(s) appearing in their eyes. it's very faint and it's most likely just a coincidence but something that looks a Little like the cethleann crest is just barely visible in linny's right eye  
> 


	2. raskovnik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A plant that can unlock or uncover anything that is locked or closed. However it is difficult to recognize, and only certain chthonic animals can identify it. In some interpretations, it is a wonderful plant that makes true whatever its owner desires._ ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raskovnik))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... a full month since the last chapter, huh. sorry about the long wait, i had a lot of other fic comms + other work that made working on this difficult 😖 but! hopefully updates from now on will be a bit more regular, or at least with shorter time intervals. anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter!
> 
>  **TW** : insects, particularly ants. it involves the swarm spell

“Lin! Did you see the new guy?” Caspar asks. He’s jumping around like a maniac, which means he’s acting much the same as usual. Linhardt blinks blandly up at him—the words on the book he’d been trying to absorb are still dancing in his vision like very enthusiastic worms. “He’s all tall and… blue and… I don’t know! But I wanna fight him!”

“Already?” Linhardt sighs. “The school year has barely even begun.”

“ _Yeah,_ but I heard he—oh! There he is!” Caspar waves his arms in the air. “Hey! Is it true you’re the one who saved Edelgard?”

 _Saved Edelgard?_ Linhardt frowns. Edelgard’s never seemed like the type who needed saving. Then again, they all have their own vulnerable moments, he supposes. But someone strong enough to help Edelgard out of a situation she couldn’t get herself out of? His curiosity has been piqued… but he’s still too tired to lift his head off the table. Maybe he can catch another nap before—

“I wouldn’t say I saved her,” a soft, vaguely-familiar voice responds. “We helped each other out in that battle.”

“It’s still incredible! Those were real bandits you faced. Oh, the name’s Caspar, by the way,” Caspar says. Linhardt doesn’t have to open his eyes to see his grin. “Pleased to meet ya! And this is—Linhardt, wake up!”

He didn’t sleep enough for this. _Must_ he introduce himself to someone when Caspar can just do it for him? Actually, hasn’t Caspar done it already, by virtue of saying his name aloud? Isn’t that good enough? With a sigh and extremely great effort, Linhardt sits up just so he can speak without getting spit all over his book. “Linhardt. Goodbye.”

Caspar shakes his head, though considering Linhardt’s still got his eyes half-closed and Caspar is only in his peripheral, all he really sees is a blur of sky-blue. “Yeah, he’s… always like this. Don’t worry, he’s real nice once he warms up to you!”

“Which will never happen,” Linhardt mutters under his breath, not particularly caring if this new person, whoever they are, hears him. More likely than not Linhardt isn’t going to care about this new person, period.

“Linhardt…?”

That familiar voice again. Linhardt frowns—what would make this voice _at all_ familiar? Father made sure he never made connections outside of his immediate circle of noble Adrestian families, and Linhardt doesn’t go out of his way to actively seek new people out. The very concept sounds tiring enough to put him to sleep. So this…

Finally, he brings himself to open his eyes the rest of the way. It’s probably just someone who sounds similar to an acquaintance, but he’s too curious now to ignore it any further. “What—”

Whatever he may have said next dies in his throat.

It’s been four years, almost five now, and while Linhardt tends to forget things near-instantly there are memories that had found their way deep into the folds of his brain, buried in the crevasses in his chest and ingrained in his heart, as inescapable as the blood that refuses to be washed out of his silk ribbon. Four-almost-five years, but Linhardt still remembers the poisonous bush, the Airmid River, the trek across Gronder Field into Bergliez territory and Fort Merceus.

Four-almost-five years, but Linhardt still remembers—can never forget—that uneven blue hair, those slanted blue eyes. “Byleth,” he breathes.

Byleth stares back at him. His facial expression hardly changes, but Linhardt can see a flicker of surprise across his features, only visible to those who are looking for it. “Linhardt,” he says again, and how could Linhardt have forgotten his voice, even if only for a few minutes? “You’ve grown.”

There’s no way he can tell, considering Linhardt is sitting down right now, but Linhardt huffs out a laugh anyway. “And you’re here.”

Between them, Caspar looks at Byleth, then at Linhardt, then at Byleth, then at Linhardt again. “Um… anyone wanna explain this to me?”

“So _you’re_ our new professor,” Linhardt muses aloud. He’d convinced Byleth to stay behind after the brief meeting for introductions, and though he suspects Edelgard and Hubert are lurking somewhere outside the classroom to listen in on them, he can’t really bring himself to care. “I have to say, you don’t strike me as much of a teacher type.”

Byleth shakes his head. “Absolutely not. I still don’t understand why that woman made my decision for me.”

“That woman?”

“You know… green hair.”

“Archbishop Rhea?” Linhardt snorts at Byleth’s nod. “You don’t even know her name? Well, you _were_ a traveling mercenary, but… still, how can you not know about her? Don’t you know anything about Fódlan’s overarching religion?”

Byleth looks distressed. “Religion?”

Linhardt shakes his head. “I see you focused entirely on fishing and battling and nothing else. What did I expect… you haven’t changed since I last saw you.”

Byleth nods. “But you’ve grown. You’re even taller than me now.” He measures their heights with his hand as if to make sure, and the side of his palm bumps against Linhardt’s forehead. “How are things? You didn’t get into any more trouble after, did you?”

“What do you think of me? No, I’ve been fine. I heard you saved our House leader from some trouble, too?” Linhardt taps his chin. “I may have grown in height, but you have certainly been getting stronger as well, if you can rescue someone as formidable as her from a dangerous situation. At least I can look forward to classes with you, then.”

Byleth looks politely confused. “Thank you?”

Linhardt leads Byleth to the dorms, because the latter is very clearly overwhelmed by the size of the monastery, and bids him goodnight when they arrive in front of his room. Linhardt, however, doesn’t get to go inside his own right away—Caspar is standing by the door, fidgeting restlessly and looking rather troubled. “Is something the problem?” Linhardt asks as he approaches.

Caspar startles. “Oh, Lin! Um… well… what was up with you and the new professor?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s probably trying to look a bit more interrogative, but considering he’s an entire head shorter than Linhardt, it doesn’t work quite as well as it would have when they were younger. “You looked like you really… know the guy.”

“He’s not ‘the guy,’ Caspar, he’s our professor.”

“Whoa, whoa, since when did _you_ care about manners?” Caspar says, looking genuinely shocked. “Okay, out with it, man. How do you know him?”

Linhardt frowns. He still hasn’t told Caspar about… everything that happened, those years ago. It’s one of the easiest ways to keep him safe, and if Linhardt had gone through all that just to get Caspar in danger again… he has no idea what he might do, then. “He’s involved with… you remember,” Linhardt murmurs, making sure no one else is in the immediate area. “When I was kidnapped.”

“ _Oh._ ” Caspar frowns. “So… he helped you, then? Can’t imagine he hurt you or anything.”

“Yes, he helped me. But he doesn’t know anything either, he only helped me get back to Fort Merceus after…” This is already too much information. “Just don’t talk to him about it. Alright?”

Caspar hesitates, but nods. “Okay. As long as you trust him. B-But don’t get too close to him, alright!” he adds, pointing an accusatory finger. “He’s our professor now, so cozying up to him is just… just… immoral!”

“Immoral,” Linhardt repeats, not sure whether to be impressed, bewildered, or amused. “I’ll keep that in mind. Will you let me take a nap now?”

Life in the Officers Academy isn’t as bad as Linhardt had expected it to be, all things considered. They’d been given a few days to move their things into their dorms and get to know fellow students, and then there’ll be a mock battle between the Houses to test their abilities and find out what subjects they need improvement on, whatever. Linhardt isn’t too interested in that. When he’s not asleep, he’s been wandering around and looking for places he could sleep in (so far the greenhouse and the fishing pond look nice), or walking around with Caspar to introduce themselves to students from other Houses.

He’s saved the best for last, of course: the library.

After his customary nap, Linhardt makes his way up to the library on the second floor of the monastery. It’s already dark out, and he’d promised Caspar he won’t miss dinner this time, but Linhardt just _has_ to see the place with his own eyes. He can’t help the smile that breaks out on his face when he pushes the doors open and looks into a beautiful treasure trove of books upon books and shelves upon shelves, all filled to the brim with new information he can’t wait to cram into his head—he’s gone through both the library in the estate and the local library in Enbarr, and he’s been dying for something fresh.

Linhardt takes a deep breath—it smells like books, of course, along with parchment and ink. Three of his favorite smells in one place. There’s still some time before dinner, so surely he can check out one book, right? Or two? Or maybe five, to keep him busy for the rest of the night?

Oh, well, it doesn’t matter as long as he finds something good. The books are arranged alphabetically by author, so Linhardt takes his time sorting through them and picking out the more interesting-looking ones for now—spending a whole year in this monastery means he’ll have plenty of time to go through the rest, after all. To his delight there are plenty of texts on Crests he hasn’t read yet—theories on Charon, experiments with Blaiddyd, drawing comparisons between the different healing Crests… He frowns when he finds one on the Crests of the Four Apostles, but still nothing on the Crest he wants to know most about.

Well, he can’t give up. A library this big is bound to have something on the Crest of Macuil—

“Oh, hello,” a voice greets. Linhardt startles, securing the books in his arms before they can tumble onto the floor. When had he gotten so many? “Can I help you, young sir? Would you like a basket?”

“No thank you,” Linhardt says. There’s no reliable way to check the time, but the candles are burning shorter than they had been the last time he looked up, so maybe he should be going on his way. “I was just about to leave. Your library is awe-inspiring.”

An elderly man steps out from behind a bookshelf, carrying a short stack of volumes in his own arms. “Is that so? Thank you for your kind words… oh, dear me,” he suddenly says, eyes widening when he sees Linhardt, “are you possibly…”

Linhardt tilts his head. “Possibly?”

“You’re the heir of Count Hevring, aren’t you?” the man asks. There’s something odd about his tone, but Linhardt assumes that’s just because mentioning his old man is enough to sour anyone’s mouths. “Linhardt von Hevring, isn’t it?”

A shiver runs down his spine. Alright, it’s definitely not because of just Father—everything about this man is just _off,_ for some reason. Linhardt looks around, assesses the situation, takes a cautious step backwards so his back is closer to a nearby wall. If he needs to make a quick escape, the man isn’t blocking the exit, at the very least. “Yes, that’s me,” Linhardt says, slowly. There’s no point denying it, since the man clearly knows who he is. “How do you know me? Or my father?”

“Don’t be silly. You’re one of the noble families, of course I know of you.” The man takes a step closer, and Linhardt matches it with another move back. Hopefully he doesn’t have to talk to this man to check these books out. “I used to live in the Empire before working here. Ah, yes, I’m the head librarian—my deepest apologies for my late introduction.”

“It’s no problem.” Linhardt swallows. “I… I’m afraid I’m running late for something. I should go.”

“Of course. Don’t let me keep you.” The man smiles, then, and Linhardt has to tamp down the magic begging to be let loose at his fingertips. It wants to defend him, protect him, and at this point Linhardt’s not sure if he’d stop it if it tried to attack. “My name is Tomas. I hope to see you here again, young Linhardt.”

Linhardt doesn’t bother with a parting goodbye—he turns around and bolts out of the library, books and all.

“ _Me?_ ”

“Yes, you,” Byleth repeats, for the umpteenth time. Somehow he never seems to lose his patience. “Is something wrong? I thought I’d like to see how you fight up close, and you’re the only one proficient in healing magic among the other students.”

Linhardt chews on his lower lip. It’s unfortunately true—the other mages, Hubert and Dorothea, are both supposedly awful at faith magic. “For an Empire known for its magic users, there certainly seems to be a shortage of them,” he mutters. “Are you sure, Byleth—ahem, Professor? I’m not much for the battlefield, if you weren’t already aware.”

“Linhardt,” Edelgard says, and Linhardt has just enough time to groan before she begins. “Do you not trust our professor? He is admittedly new to the job, but he is also a trained mercenary who has incredible experience on the field—in fact, he is essentially the _only_ one with experience on the field at all, among us students. Besides, if you’re worried about getting hurt, this is just a mock battle. I suspect Claude has something up his sleeve, but Dimitri is likely too naive to—”

“Alright, alright, I get it, I understand, Lady Edelgard,” Linhardt interrupts, his head already beginning to ache from the sheer deluge of words. “Must you always go on a tangent every time I voice my concerns aloud? A simple ‘oh, Linhardt, just trust our professor,’ would have sufficed, I assure you.”

Edelgard bristles, as Linhardt had half-expected. “Because it seems that no matter how few or how many words I say, you retain none of them in that head of yours! Your intelligence outstrips almost all of us in the House, so I do not understand why—”

“Um… please calm down,” Byleth sighs. Linhardt reluctantly discards the retort he had already been forming in his head. “So, is it decided?” Byleth looks down at the class list in his hands. “Edelgard, Hubert, Linhardt, Ferdinand, and Bernadetta… ah, and myself.”

Ferdinand and Bernadetta? Linhardt would rather go into that mock battle on his own. “How about Caspar?” he weakly suggests. “He’s been rather excited about this since the mock battle was announced.”

To Linhardt’s despair, Byleth shakes his head. “The point is to find out what the students’ weaknesses are. I have never seen Caspar shoot an arrow and have it get anywhere near the target.”

He’s painfully honest. Linhardt sighs and accepts his fate.

The mock battle starts off easily enough—Byleth and Edelgard lead the way, with Ferdinand following closely behind, and all Linhardt has to do is cast the occasional Heal spell from afar without ever needing to endanger himself. They engage with the Blue Lions first, in order to circle around the small copse of woods the Golden Deer evidently plan on using to their advantage, and Linhardt is extremely tempted to sit down and take a nap when Byleth orders Bernadetta to snipe at an unsuspecting Dimitri from afar. He ends up looking like an unfortunate pincushion before he surrenders and trudges to the sidelines.

“Linhardt,” Byleth calls. Linhardt looks up from helping Bernadetta pick up some of the fallen arrows. “Do you know any reason magic?”

His breath catches in his throat. Linhardt suppresses the instant urge to run away, lock himself in his room, and hide forever, and instead clears his throat. “Why?”

“I’ve heard magic can be more effective than regular weapons when aiming at an enemy.” Byleth points to the woods. Ferdinand and Edelgard had taken down Ignatz and Lorenz earlier, leaving only Hilda and Claude hiding in the forest, along with Professor Manuela on the healing tile behind the woods. “Go with Hubert and help him defeat Claude and Hilda. We’ll deal with Professor Hanneman.”

“I…” Linhardt swallows, inhales and exhales, counts to ten backwards in his head. “Yes, of course.”

He pushes himself to jog over to where Hubert is waiting near the entrance to the woods, frowning up at the taller man once he slows to a stop at his side. “No need to look so displeased with me when I haven’t even slipped up yet,” Linhardt tells him. “Our House leader does that job admirably well already.”

“You would find it wise to avoid speaking of Lady Edelgard in such a manner again,” Hubert murmurs, voice as dark as the rest of him.

“Ugh. Save me the lecture. Shall we wrap this up? I’m in need of a nap after all this work,” Linhardt grumbles, crossing his arms. He’s aware he’s acting like a petulant child, but it’s mostly to hide the rapid drum of his heart, the magic beginning to curl at his fingertips at the realization that it will soon be used. _No,_ Linhardt tries to tell it; _not now._

Hubert gives him another dirty look—impressive, really, how he can convey so much emotion with only one visible eye—before stalking into the forest. Linhardt lets him get a few steps ahead, then follows suit.

The woods aren’t very big or deep, just the right size for two pesky tricksters Linhardt had not been looking forward to going up against. It’s quiet, with only the faint sounds of battle going on outside; Linhardt strains his ears to hear anything else, but he can’t even make out Byleth’s voice. A shame—hearing him would have soothed Linhardt’s nerves, if only slightly. “Stop,” Hubert whispers, staring over at a thin gap between trees. “I sensed movement. One of them has to be over there.”

Linhardt frowns. “Well, go ahead and blast them with your magic, then.”

“Are you a fool? They’re obviously waiting for us to make the first move, then have the other one take us by surprise while we’re distracted.” Hubert conjures a weak Miasma spell instead, and it floats in a small, condensed ball over his palm. Once, Linhardt would have turned tail and bolted out of the monastery just from one whiff; now he only wrinkles his nose at the smell. “This one should do.”

“What are you—”

The miasma unfurls into a long, snake-like shape, then zips into the gap between trees, perfectly silent. Linhardt feels his frown deepen. “Was was that? Tracking magic?” He’s tried casting his own a few times before, but without many textbooks to help him, he’s only been able to make rudimentary ones that barely reach a few feet away before dissipating.

Hubert chuckles darkly. “I wonder. If we do not want to alert the other half of that annoying pair, then we just have to ensure they cannot speak, yes?”

Something falls with a _thump_ on the grass.

Linhardt isn’t thinking when he breaks off and runs through the gap, ignoring Hubert’s surprised noise and the way his lungs are already beginning to strain from fatigue—all that matters are the chills along his skin, the tingle at his fingertips, the magic drifting in a haze in his head. How long has it been since he last handled someone else’s dark magic? Four years, almost five, and not one day has passed where he’s forgotten how it felt, to have so much power wrapped around his finger, to throw that magic right back at its owner—

He reaches out, grabs the snake of miasma that had curled around Claude’s throat, and sends it scattering into the sky. Dust rains down around them; Linhardt waves a hand, and the poison glimmers before transforming into harmless raindrops that splash on his shoulders.

From the ground, Claude blinks up at him, hands still in a tugging motion near his neck. “Er… Linhardt, right? What just—”

“Claude!” a voice that only belong to Hilda sings from behind; Linhardt whirls around, backing up against the nearest tree. “I knocked out the weird, dark-looking guy! Who’s next?”

Claude grabs his bow, which had been lying on the grass next to him, and notches an arrow to point towards Linhardt almost immediately. The magic screams, strains; sweat drips down the sides of Linhardt’s face from the effort of keeping it under wraps. “Say, I don’t know why you helped out the enemy,” Claude says, voice both teasing and cautious at once, “but while I’m not complaining, I’ll have to pay back my debt some other time. I don’t plan on handing the victory over to you guys, see.”

He seems fine. No lasting scars around his neck, no burns or gashes or blood. Linhardt lets himself sigh in relief. “Put that arrow of yours somewhere else. I don’t intend on fighting anyone.”

“Hmm.” Claude smiles, but doesn’t lower his bow. Linhardt hadn’t actually been expecting him to, but it’s a disappointment all the same. Without taking his eyes off Linhardt, Claude shouts, “I’ll handle it from here, Hilda! Go and see if there’s anyone else you can get.”

“Ugh, so much _work._ ”

As soon as Hilda’s dragging footsteps fade from earshot, Claude narrows his eyes at Linhardt. “Thought you were a healer. What’s with the dark magic?”

“That was Hubert,” Linhardt mutters.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Dark magic is magic. It’s no different from handling reason or faith.” Linhardt turns his nose up on Claude as best as he can, folding his arms over his chest. He has exactly two centimeters over the other boy, and he very nearly goes on his tiptoes to make the most of it. “Of course, I doubt you would know very much about that.”

Claude only looks amused, like this is all a very entertaining play. “Nice try, but you’re not as good at lying as you might think. You definitely panicked back there a little, too. Got some dark secrets you’d like to tell me?”

Linhardt raises an eyebrow. “If you lower that bow of yours, I’ll consider it.”

“Mm… tempting, but not worth it,” Claude cheerfully replies. “Well, this was a nice talk and all, but I’m no good as a House leader if I leave the dirty work to the others. This’ll hurt just a bit, Linhardt.” And he lets loose the arrow at point-blank range.

It’s almost too fast for Linhardt to react, but somehow he manages to snap out a Mire spell that wraps around the arrow and eats away at the wood seconds before it would have found home in his arm. Claude’s amazed expression is something Linhardt would probably enjoy under different circumstances, but right now he’d really rather not stick around for longer than necessary—he runs back the way he came, scooping Hubert’s unconscious body up as best as he can, and emerges out of the forest before Claude can fire any more arrows.

Luckily Edelgard is nearby, bearing new wounds and scrapes Linhardt’s sure hadn’t been there before. “Linhardt—Hubert!” she cries, nearly dropping her axe when she spots them. “What happened to you two? Is Hubert alright?”

Linhardt casts an assessment spell over the man and nods. “Just a mild head bruise. He’ll be fine.” He follows that up with a proper Heal spell, focusing it at the back of Hubert’s head, where Hilda most likely hit him with the back of her axe. Considering how sickly Hubert looks, Linhardt can’t imagine he’ll be walking around fine in a minute, but the headache should only last for the rest of the day rather than the rest of the week. “Where are the others?”

Edelgard sighs. “Professor Hanneman defeated Bernadetta before Byleth took him down. Ferdinand ran off into the woods by himself to look for you two like the gallant fool he is, so I assume he’s busy with Professor Manuela now. Hilda came by,” she says, gesturing at the wounds over her body that Linhardt hurries to heal as well, “but rushed off when I tried to land a finishing blow, the coward.”

“I’d say she’s fairly smart for that.”

“Quiet. Is she the one who did that to Hubert?”

Linhardt sets Hubert down to lean against the fence. “Yes. Claude is still in there too, by the way.” At the look Edelgard gives him, he scowls back at her. “What? Did you expect me to take on the both of them all on my lonesome? May I remind you that I was brought to this battle to heal rather than fight?”

“Urgh. You are insufferable. What do I need to do for you to take me seriously?”

“I fear that’s my line as well, Your High-and-Mightiness.”

Edelgard looks like she means to turn that axe from foe to friend, but falters at the last minute and turns around to swing her weapon down instead, cutting an arrow mid-flight. Linhardt startles backwards—that arrow had been aimed right at him. Damn that Claude. Maybe Linhardt should have kept the poison dust as poison dust after all. “There they are,” Edelgard growls, her grip tightening on the handle of her axe. “Come out and face us like real fighters!”

“Us?” Linhardt mutters. “It’s just you here, Edelgard. Don’t count me in on this.”

“D’you hear that, Claude? Be a man!” Hilda says. She sounds like she had meant to whisper it, but her voice is so loud it carries across the field with no problem. Linhardt wonders how Claude’s ears are doing right now. A pause, and then, “Fine, then I’ll go! You better let me slack off later!”

She stomps out, pigtails swaying and axe gleaming; Linhardt thinks he’s going to be slightly sick. Behind her, Claude walks out from the woods as well, though he keeps a significant distance away. “There you are,” Edelgard huffs. “Perfect, it’s two-on-two. Linhardt, stand up and pull your weight. Surely you know some reason magic.”

“I don’t—” Linhardt heaves a sigh. “How many times must I remind you that I am here to _heal—_ ”

He doesn’t get to finish reminding her, as Hilda rushes them while Claude fires yet more arrows. Linhardt ducks behind Hubert while Edelgard meets Hilda head-on, their axes screeching against one another. Linhardt groans in frustration; there’s no way he’s getting out of this by just sitting here and doing nothing, as he doubts even Edelgard can defeat both Hilda and Claude by herself. He had reacted instinctively and let loose that Mire spell earlier, but if he lets go too much…

He can’t. He shouldn’t. But… just a little. A little won’t hurt. Linhardt’s trained himself for this, no matter how much he hadn’t wanted to, because somehow he had known something like this would happen to him someday.

Linhardt takes a deep breath, lets it out. He stinks of mire already, so a bit more will hardly make a difference.

He’s not sure how long he spends in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet and later standing over the sink, but at some point Linhardt trudges back into his dorm room just to see the dark sky outside his window. Is it that late already? He could have sworn it was still sunset when he had fled the dining hall as soon as the other students weren’t paying attention to him.

Linhardt washes his face one more time in the sink, staring down at the veins on the backs of his palms. They’re still a faint gray, but not enough to be noticeable, and they’ll be normal again by morning. A small consolation—some days he finds himself wishing they stay gray forever, to serve as a reminder of what he did and what he is. But—he closes his eyes. There’s no point dwelling on this now, and he hadn’t hurt anyone for real. The Swarm spell had been mostly to distract Hilda, and it had worked perfectly when she shrieked and ran away from the worms that rapidly crawled towards her, and then Edelgard had handily taken care of Claude.

No, using dark magic isn’t what bothers Linhardt most—it’s the way Edelgard had turned around to look at him, her eyes wide, her expression shocked. It was how Caspar, who had watched and seen everything from the sidelines, jumped around him like a small, excited animal and asked when and how Linhardt learned how to do that. It was how Byleth said nothing, gave nothing away, but cast Linhardt a long look behind his back.

It was how the other students gave him a wide berth when they all left for the dining hall together, and how their whispers drifted in and out of his ears, near-indiscernible from the whispers of the magic in his head.

He stinks of mud and insects. Linhardt strips himself bare again and steps into the shower for the third time within the past few hours.

“How do you feel about joining the Golde—”

“I’m not interested.” Linhardt turns a page of his book.

Claude huffs and leans back, crossing his arms. “Well, it was worth a try. Seriously, though, not anyone can just use dark magic. I don’t know much about it myself, but from what I’ve gathered it looks like you either have to be born with the ability to learn it or… something else.” He shrugs. “Lysithea—you know her, right? Short, looks like a baby, white hair like yours?”

 _Like mine?_ Linhardt tugs subconsciously at the end of his low ponytail, the tip of his finger brushing against one end of his ribbon. “I know of her.”

“Yeah, well, she can use dark magic too, but she doesn’t want to teach it to me either. Thought I could have two pasty-white kids like you in the best House, but I guess not.” Claude lifts his arms in a what-can-you-do gesture. Linhardt has to take deep breaths to keep himself from throwing a book in his face. “See you around then, Linhardt!”

“I sincerely hope not,” Linhardt grumbles.

It’s a lovely day outside—the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the wind is blowing. Whatever. In Linhardt’s opinion, it’s a perfect day to spend indoors here in the library, where there is no sun to burn his skin, no birdsong to irritate his ears, and no wind to thoroughly mess up his hair. A shame he hadn’t accounted for a certain Golden Deer House leader to show his face around here, but at least he had left without making too much of a fuss.

Still, Linhardt lets his thoughts drift for a moment. Lysithea… yes, of course Linhardt knows about her. She hadn’t been at the mock battle, but she frequents the library almost as much as Linhardt, and he sometimes catches her practicing what is unmistakably dark magic with Hubert in the training grounds. Sometimes Linhardt envies the both of them, to be able to wield such magic without fear of the repercussions… or visible fear, Linhardt reminds himself. Edelgard had, after all, praised him (possibly for the first time since the beginning of the school year) for his calmness and cool-headed composure during the last stretch of the mock battle.

The words had been kind, or at least given with good intentions. So why does thinking of them only make Linhardt’s mood worse?

He sighs and stands up, closing the book and tucking it under his arm. It’s probably for the best he leave the library before it empties out for the day, after all—he can still feel the eyes of the head librarian, Tomas or whatever his name is, burning holes in the back of his head.

There isn’t much to do on a day without classes—Byleth still isn’t quite used to teaching, and so had conveniently forgotten to assign them homework over the weekend in his last class, a blessing Linhardt would have personally thanked the goddess for if he cared about religion. Linhardt wanders around lazily, sticking to roofed and shaded areas, before finally finding a nice bench to sit and read on. The library is admittedly a bit stuffy, despite its opened windows, and the breeze here isn’t strong enough to do more than blow a few stray strands of hair.

Of course, Linhardt was a fool to believe he could get the same amount of peace and quiet out here than back in the library.

“Lin!” an unmistakable voice shouts. Linhardt sighs and closes his book two seconds after opening it, just in time for Caspar to pop into view beside him. Where had he even come from? Oh, well. “Here you are! I thought you wanted to spend all day in the library. What brings?”

“Hm… I wanted some fresh air, I suppose,” Linhardt mumbles, propping his chin up on his palm. Caspar’s holding a training axe in one hand and he’s all roughed up and dusty, so Linhardt can only assume he’s been rolling around in the dirt of the training grounds. Linhardt supposes he should have expected that. “And you? How did you know to come here?”

“I’ve got a Linhardt sixth sense.” Caspar plops down on the bench to sit beside him, resting the axe against it so he can stretch his arms. “Man, I’m beat! I did lots of training today while the sun’s up. You know, Felix and Raphael make pretty good training buddies!”

“Do they?” Linhardt has no idea who those two are. They certainly weren’t at the mock battle. “I’m glad for you, but you need to relax sometime, Caspar. The training grounds aren’t going to suddenly close up.” Just thinking about training, even if it doesn’t involve him, already has him yawning. He hopes Caspar doesn’t get any ideas in his head about—

“‘Course I take time to rest! Rest is important in training too. But _you_ rest way too much,” Caspar says. Linhardt already knows where this is going. “Lin, come train with me. We’ll take breaks every five minutes if you need to! And I know you’ll need to. So, please?”

Linhardt lets out the heaviest sigh he’s ever sighed. “ _Must_ I?”

“Don’t you remember what the professor told us? We’re going on a mission to take on some bandits at the end of the month,” Caspar says. Linhardt frowns. Byleth said that? It was probably when Linhardt was asleep, then. “And I worry about you! I know you’re a healer, but in case you get into any sticky situations, you gotta know how to get yourself out of ‘em! Or at least take care of yourself until someone else like me can come help out!”

“Ugh…” Linhardt’s never been able to shake Caspar off when he gets determined to drag him into training, and he doubts this is going to be any different. “Fine. I’m afraid my swordfighting skills haven’t improved since the last time you tried to stick a sword in my hands, though.”

Caspar jumps off the bench, snatching up his axe. “No problem! I don’t wanna talk swords, I wanna see if you can do more of that dark magic of yours!”

Linhardt’s heart very nearly stutters to a stop. “I’m sorry?”

“You never told me you could cast dark magic! I always thought you focused more on reason and faith.” Caspar’s bouncing on his heels, so genuinely _excited,_ a big smile on his face like he doesn’t see anything wrong with this, and—“I’m already used to physical attackers, but I’ve got no idea how dark magic might work. So training with you would be—”

“I have to go.”

Caspar blinks. “Huh?”

“I—I have to go,” Linhardt repeats, haltingly. He can feel it already, the magic rearing its ugly head up, sniffing the air upon hearing its name. He brushes Caspar off, stumbles over towards some random direction, and then he’s running, running, _fleeing_ like a coward from his own best friend, running and running and tripping and falling and sprawling out across the floorboards of the entrance hall—someone comes near, offers him a hand, but Linhardt pushes himself up and runs past them too, runs and runs until he’s throwing the door of his room open and burying himself under the blankets.

He keeps his head out, stares right into the sunlight streaming in through the uncovered window, but wraps the rest of himself up in the sheets. It’s soft, warm, comforting—not bloody, not cold, not the hard stone floor of the dungeons. It’s not dark—there’s light, there’s sunshine, there’s a window. He’s here, not there.

He’s here, not there.

Linhardt waves a hand—a thin stream of Mire, so small and narrow it could be mistaken for a bit of ink, slips into the doorknob and seals the door shut. He lays there for the rest of the day and right through dinner until night falls, and then he has to drag himself out just to light the lantern beside his bed.

 _Fool,_ the magic whispers. _Why run away? We know each other well. I would never disobey you, or do anything you do not wish of me. Certainly I would not go out of my way to hurt someone so dear to you._

Linhardt thinks the worst part about that is that the magic is right. He closes his eyes and drifts into a restless sleep.

“You dropped this.”

Linhardt blinks, slowly. Stares. Lets out a little ‘huh’ sound. Then, finally, takes the book in his hands. “Did I,” he mumbles.

“You did.” Byleth gives him an odd look. “I heard from Petra she saw you trip and fall yesterday and tried to help you up, but you pushed past her and went right on. And not a minute later Caspar came crying to me about how he made you mad. You look more tired than anything to me, though.”

“Ah, Professor, I’m always tired.” Linhardt tucks the book back into his bag. He can’t remember where he had dropped it, but definitely during his mad rush for escape. “So that was Petra? I’ll have to apologize later.” At Byleth’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “I’m not _that_ rude, you know. She’s a nice classmate, she deserves an apology.”

Byleth shakes his head. “Did something happen?”

“I tripped and fell?”

“With Caspar.”

Linhardt bites down on his tongue. The last thing he needs now is to have another person prying into his personal business—Edelgard and Hubert have kept to themselves, at least, probably because they know a thing or two about privacy, and it looks like the other students have mostly forgotten about the mock battle by now. Claude hasn’t bothered him again, too. But with Byleth, the one other person who may have an inkling as to what had happened to Linhardt all those years ago…

“He wanted to train with me.” Linhardt swallows. “With… dark magic.”

“Ah.” Byleth looks around them, and Linhardt reluctantly does the same. They’re outside the Black Eagles classroom, with Byleth having stopped Linhardt from leaving after class, and most other students are milling about and minding their own business, nowhere near enough to listen in. “Would you like to talk about this somewhere else?” Byleth offers all the same.

Linhardt huffs. “There’s nothing to talk about, I assure you.”

“Is that so?” Byleth digs around in his pockets, then fishes out a pair of teabags. “I heard you like Angelica tea, and I bought some while they were on sale in the market. If you don’t want to talk, do you at least want to drink tea?”

Who in this accursed monastery would have known about Linhardt’s bias for Angelica tea? Caspar is the only one who may have an idea, but Linhardt can’t imagine he just randomly went up to their professor and told him about something like that. Oh, well—Linhardt will take it. “Fine. It is tea, after all. Where to, Professor?”

They find a fairly secluded spot somewhere and settle—Byleth prepares the tea while Linhardt stares blankly at some nearby plants, swaying in the breeze. “Do you know magic, Byleth?” Linhardt asks, dropping the title. It’s rather impossible to think of him as his teacher, after all.

Byleth shrugs. “A little. I’m learning from the other teachers.”

“Ah, yes, Professors Manuela and Hanneman specialize in faith and reason magic respectively. You’re lucky to have them around.” Linhardt blows a stray strand of hair out of his face. “How does it feel when you cast spells? Does it come naturally, or is it challenging?”

Byleth has a look on his face that tells Linhardt he hadn’t been expecting to be the one being questioned, but he responds anyway. “It… was a little difficult, at first. But it’s become easier as I practice. I’m fairly confident in the Fire and Heal spells, at least, though I still prefer to use a sword.”

“Of course,” Linhardt murmurs, but that isn’t quite the answer he was looking for. To be fair, none of Linhardt’s tutors ever gave him the answer he was looking for during those four years; he’s not sure why he hoped Byleth would. “Since you brought me all the way out here, though, I suppose you intend on getting some information out of me in the end. What would you like to know?”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Byleth says, his voice unchanging. He pours their tea into two cups, and pushes one closer to Linhardt’s end of the table before sitting down on the chair across him. “I just thought you might prefer we be away from others.”

“You thought right,” Linhardt sighs.

He takes a sip of his tea, sets the cup down on its saucer, and leans back against the chair to close his eyes. Angelica tea has always helped soothe his nerves, calm his heart, quiet the magic—though on his worse days the smell of the herbs only work him up more, throws his concentration off and has his spells zigzagging through the garden at the estate he used to practice in. Most of the plants had withered and died a long time ago, so there was no longer anything alive there to accidentally kill. Later on the magic would whisper to him, _apologize_ to him, even encourage him to return and try again, this time with better, keener focus. _Think about nothing else,_ it used to say. _That is when I am my strongest._

“Go away,” Linhardt used to whimper back, wrapped up in his blankets in bed, his palms stinging from the cuts that had opened up at the misused magic. “I hate you.”

_But we could be so strong together. We are bound intrinsically whether we wished it or not, and we may as well make the best of our time as one._

Linhardt had to look up ‘intrinsically’ on the dictionary later, when Father wasn’t paying attention. _In a natural or essential way,_ the book read. He wanted to scoff, back then, and he still wants to now—there was nothing natural about how the magic within him came to be, nothing essential about the pain and the dungeon and the darkness and the bodies.

“Fine,” he says. Linhardt lifts his gaze, meets Byleth’s dull blue eyes. “What do you want to know?”

Byleth stares at him, and for a long moment there is only silence. Then, finally, when Linhardt suspects the other man’s tea has long gone cold already, he asks, “What happened four years ago?”

“Must I answer that? It looks like you already have an idea.”

“Tell me what you can.”

Linhardt does, haltingly: the dark mages, Solon, his second Crest, the experiments, how he eventually escaped and wound up collapsing outside. “Since then, I’ve never been able to cast reason magic again,” Linhardt murmurs, staring down at his now-empty cup. “I’ve tried, of course, but the spells always end up becoming dark. Wind becomes Miasma, for instance.” He stares down at his palm then flicks his wrist, effortlessly—a small breeze starts up around them, tickling Linhardt’s cheeks, but the smell of miasma is so thick in the air that anyone would think he had tried to poison them. “You see?”

Byleth sniffs the air like a hunting dog. “I thought so. This is what you smelled like when I first found you.”

“You remember?”

“It was hard to forget. I’d never smelled anyone else like that.”

“Alright, bloodhound,” Linhardt mutters. “That’s all, though. I don’t imagine this is even that interesting to you. What do you know about Crests?” The few commoners he had spoken to before the academy never really knew much about them, after all, aside from a few of the more well-known ones such as the Crests of Seiros or Blaiddyd, and most held deep contempt towards Crests in general. Linhardt can’t say he doesn’t relate.

Byleth looks thoughtful. “Nothing much. I’ve been trying to read up on them, though. I have one myself, so I thought I should make an effort to know more about it.”

“Of course, I thought s—” Linhardt pauses. Runs the words in his head again. “Wait. What?”

“What?”

“ _What?_ ” Linhardt stands up and slams his palms against the table. They’ve finished the tea by now, so there’s no danger of any of it spilling, but when he pulls his hands away from the table the white surface has been stained with splotches of purple. “You have a _Crest?_ ”

Byleth has the gall to look _confused._ “I didn’t mention it?”

“ _No?_ ”

“Oh. Well, Professor Hanneman ran the Crest Analyzer on me the other day, but he couldn’t identify the Crest that came up. So I’ve been trying to look for similar patterns in books, but nothing has stood out.” Byleth gestures towards Linhardt’s chair. “Won’t you sit down?”

Linhardt opens and closes his mouth several times, trying and failing to form coherent words and sentences, before finally giving up and taking his seat before his legs give out from shock. A Crest even Professor Hanneman, the leading researcher of Crestology, doesn’t recognize? Moreover, _Byleth_ —a mercenary, a _commoner_ —has a Crest? Perhaps he could secretly be of noble lineage, Linhardt hurries to theorize. After all, he’s never once mentioned his mother, so perhaps she had passed on her Crest to her and simply never told either Jeralt nor Byleth. Or maybe Byleth isn’t of Jeralt’s blood—they hardly look alike, after all—and he had been a Crest-bearing noble’s abandoned son, later adopted by a band of mercenaries.

“Um… Linhardt?” Byleth prods. Linhardt reluctantly brings himself out of his own head, despite his thoughts whirling around like an internal hurricane. “Are you alright? You spaced out a little there.”

Linhardt takes a deep breath, exhales, and does this three more times until he is fairly confident he can speak without exploding all at once. “I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, Byleth, or if it was not already obvious considering the story I just told you, but I find Crests fascinating. They have been a part of our lives since the goddess bestowed them upon us or whatnot, yet there is still so very little research on them. And with my situation as it is, finding out more about Crests is currently of utmost importance for me. So what I mean to say is—please let me research you.”

Instead of nodding, answering, or reacting at all, Byleth just stares at him.

Linhardt clears his throat. “I believe I worded that wrong. Let me research you. This is not a request.”

“So you’re ordering me.”

“I prefer to say this is simply an exchange of information,” Linhardt demurs. “Surely you didn’t intend to just let me tell you my entire sob story and then walk away from here right after? I demand some compensation.”

Byleth gestures at the teacups. “This _was_ the compensation.”

“Could you please just say yes already?”

“One more condition.” Byleth meets his gaze. “Talk to Caspar about this. You don’t need to tell him everything, but at least clear up the misunderstanding from yesterday.”

Linhardt can’t say he hadn’t been expecting that, just a little bit. He sighs and slumps forward, previous energy and motivation already beginning to ebb. “You make it sound so easy,” he mumbles. And in theory, it is: they’re best friends, they tell each other everything, even the sorts of secrets that would have their respective fathers after their necks, because they’ve always trusted each other with anything. What happened four years ago is no different.

What happened four years ago _should_ be no different. But it is, when this is the sort of secret that would have not their fathers but someone else, _something_ else entirely, hunting them down. After all, Linhardt doubts they’ve given up on looking for one of their successful experiments, and he already knows they have no limits as to how low they will stoop to secure his compliance.

“From yesterday,” Linhardt concedes. “But that’s it.”

Byleth says nothing. He lets Linhardt leave without another word.

Linhardt had mostly slept through class earlier, only waking up twice throughout that hour—once to retrieve the required textbook from his bag to use as a pillow, and once to sneak a bite of a pastry he had snuck out from the dining hall this morning—so there hadn’t been any time to feel awkward and tense around Caspar, who hadn’t sat beside him like usual, but all the way on the other side of the classroom. Fair enough, really. Linhardt supposes he might do that, too, if he thought Caspar was upset with him.

But is _he_ upset with Caspar?

Linhardt finds him at the training grounds, predictably enough, though he isn’t sparring with someone like Linhardt had thought, but rather sitting by the side, absently polishing a training sword over and over again despite the thing already sparkling clean. There are a few other students around, none of whom pay Linhardt any attention, so he supposes there’s no risk of being eavesdropped on in here.

He doesn’t hesitate to walk over and plop down on the spot beside Caspar. “Hello.”

Caspar jolts, yelps, and drops the sword—it _clangs_ loudly on the floor, drawing the attention of some students, and Linhardt dreads to know what could have happened if it had landed blade-first. “L-Lin! Um… you’re here!”

“Yes, I am.” Linhardt sighs. He hadn’t thought this through at all. What is he supposed to say now? Perhaps he should just get everything out and over with and then let Caspar say his piece after, since it looks like Caspar is still too surprised to speak. “About yesterday—”

“I’m really sorry!” Caspar shouts, this time much louder than the training sword. The students who had just turned away from them turn right back, their expressions now more annoyed than confused. “I didn’t know that was a, uh, a sensitive topic for you! I’m an idiot, I should have asked if you’d be okay with it first, or—no, I shouldn’t have brought it up at all! I thought you were just shy about it or something, so…” Caspar sighs, slumping back against the pillar behind him. “Uh… I dunno where I was going with this, but…”

Linhardt waits another few seconds, then does his best to sound gentle when he asks, “Done?” At Caspar’s nod, Linhardt sits up a little straighter and speaks. “Caspar, I’m not mad.”

Caspar’s head snaps up so quickly, Linhardt hopes he doesn’t get a crick in his neck. “What?”

“I panicked a little… er, a lot… yesterday, but I’m not upset. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Linhardt picks at a loose thread on his sleeve. He’s never done this before—they had never really fought or argued, so there was no reason for them to have such a serious conversation like this. Even four years ago, Caspar hadn’t pressed Linhardt about what happened, which must have been—and probably still is—an impressive show of self-control from the most impulsive person Linhardt knows. “Please don’t apologize. That’s my job.”

“Ah… well…” Caspar’s gone slack-jawed. Had he not been expecting this? Honestly, Linhardt can’t even imagine being angry with Caspar, despite everything. Nothing has ever really been his fault, and even otherwise Linhardt would forgive him. He always does. “So, um… we’re okay, then?”

Linhardt nods. “I don’t understand why you’d think we weren’t.”

“Wow! Okay!” Caspar exclaims, jumping up to his feet. Linhardt jolts backwards. “Whoa, I can’t believe it. I stressed over this all day and night but we’re okay!”

“You did…?”

“I’ll never bother you about training again, Lin, I _promise_ this time,” Caspar swears, so earnestly that Linhardt wouldn’t be able to _not_ believe him if he tried. “I still have to get to training, but don’t worry, it’s not with you! Umm… you think Hubert would be willing? He’s kind of weird but not scary, so it should be fine, right?”

“Wait, stop.” Linhardt pushes himself up, blinking away the dizziness. “Hubert? You mean you’re going to train with _him_ for dark magic?”

Caspar blinks up at him. “Well, yeah? I mean, I still wanna be able to counter magic, but I’ve already been helping Dorothea with reason and faith. So there’s just dark remaining. And!” He smacks his own palm with his fist. Considering his habit of forgetting he’s holding things sometimes, Linhardt is eternally glad the training sword Caspar had been cleaning is still on the floor. “I’ve been hearing rumors, y’know? That there are creeps who use dark magic and who might be up against the Church or something like that. So, just in case we come across people like ‘em, I’ll be ready!”

Linhardt’s head feels like it’s been rolled down a flight of stairs. _Rumors? Creeps?_ So Caspar already knows, then, or at least has an idea of _those people._ It’s possible the rumors might be talking about some other group, but Linhardt can’t think of anyone else who might fit the description. He can’t let Caspar know any more about them, or else…

“No,” Linhardt says.

Caspar blinks again. “No?”

“No. Not Hubert.” Linhardt takes a deep breath, exhales. “I’ll train with you.”

It takes _ages_ to get Caspar to agree to it, and even longer for Caspar to _actually_ do it. In fairness, Linhardt’s brain feels like it’s throwing itself around inside his skull, as if in some fruitless, desperate attempt to escape its prison and run off to inhabit someone smarter.

But Linhardt has seen how Hubert handles his magic—it’s magic trained for stealth, best under cover of night, made for the quickest and quietest of murders. He had been confused when Linhardt had (nervously, but refused to show it) confronted him about trying to _kill_ a fellow student during the mock battle, even if said fellow student is a meddlesome meddler by the name of Claude von Riegan, but Hubert had only been genuinely confused. He hadn’t been aiming for the kill, he said. It was just to silence him for a while.

Had he been telling the truth? Linhardt had, and still has, no idea. Even if he had been honest, it didn’t change that the throat was one of the most dangerous body parts to target. If Linhardt hadn’t acted… would something have happened? Would Hubert do the same to Caspar?

“Seriously, you _don’t_ have to do this,” Caspar says, for possibly the fifteenth time within as many minutes.

Linhardt sighs. “That would be more convincing if you aren’t already standing across me. At this rate the sun is going to go down before any of us ever make a move.” By now the other students who had been at the training grounds have already finished up their training for the day, save for a few others doing some exercise at the side. It’s late afternoon, too, and Linhardt is starving—he regrets not having asked Byleth to bring some pastries along to their little tea party.

“Okay, fine,” Caspar finally gives in, his grip tightening around his training axe, “but you _have_ to tell me when you need to stop, or if you need anything, or if it’s too much for you, or—”

“Caspar.”

“Okay! Okay. Okay.” Caspar closes his eyes, sighs, then looks back up at Linhardt with renewed determination. For some reason, it has Linhardt’s heart stuttering in his chest—he’s seen that expression on Caspar before, of course, because Caspar is nothing but sheer willpower and determination packed in a tiny vessel, but somehow it’s different when Linhardt is the target of it.

Still, he can’t let himself get distracted over his best friend’s face. Linhardt tenses, lets the magic flow slowly through his arms. Under the sleeves of his uniform he imagines his veins beginning to pulse a faint gray, spreading all the way until they reach his palms and he can feel the power at his fingertips. What defensive spells had he taught himself? How can he make use of them here, while also finding a way to knock Caspar out without too much harm, if at all?

Caspar always shouts when he’s fighting, and this time is no different—he rushes Linhardt with his typical battle cry, axe raised up and ready to attack, though after watching him train for years Linhardt can tell it’s positioned for only the flat of the blade to strike. He’s faster, Linhardt admits, but that’s fine—what matters is that Linhardt’s mind is the fastest thing here.

He closes his eyes, extends his arms, opens his palms, and the mire comes shivering out of the cracks in the ground to wrap around Caspar’s ankles, tripping him up and sending him sprawling onto the floor, though at least he doesn’t lose hold on his axe. Linhardt carefully cracks one eye open; the mire isn’t strong enough to burn through the fabric of his uniform pants, though Linhardt suspects they’ll leave some purple stains Caspar will simply have to deal with on laundry day. If Linhardt tries hard enough, they’ll be able to eat away at flesh and bone, but that sounds like far too much effort for absolutely zero gain. More powerful faith magic will be able to heal the wounds easily enough, though. Are Linhardt’s healing spells stronger than his dark magic? He wishes he had someone to try that on, but the last thing he wants now is to force Caspar through avoidable pain—

“ _Ow,_ ” Linhardt protests, stumbling back when Caspar gets him good in the shoulder. _That’s_ going to leave a bruise. The axe has been abandoned on the floor, which Linhardt is fine with—Caspar can hold back much better with his fists, and Linhardt would rather avoid pain, too. “Have some respect, I was thinking.”

Caspar laughs, eyes sparkling with both mirth and adrenaline, and Linhardt relaxes despite himself. “You’re one to talk about respect, Lin! And besides, no self-respecting enemy’s gonna pass up on a chance to get you while you’re distracted!”

“Hmph…” He’s right about that. Caspar’s already coming at him again, and Linhardt scrambles back, cycling through his mental catalog of spells. _Close-range, close-range—_ ugh, he had trained himself for utility and control, not actual combat. Will Miasma work? No, some purple dust won’t block a solid punch—Mire might be too dangerous to use when there’s no fabric in the way, and the last thing Linhardt wants to do is _really_ injure Caspar—

He gets punched in the face. Linhardt really should have expected this.

“Oh, shit! Lin, you alright?” Caspar frets, but his voice is drifting in one of Linhardt’s ears and out the other. At least Linhardt hadn’t fallen and cracked his skull on the floor, because that would have just been the frosting on the cake. “I thought you could get out of the way, or, like, block it or something—h-hey, you can talk, right? I didn’t hit you _that_ hard!”

“Really?” Linhardt mumbles, blinking blearily and trying to get all his senses in working order again. Caspar had hit one of his cheeks, so at least his vision isn’t going to be impaired, though he suspects he is going to have a magnificent bruise on the entire right half of his face tomorrow morning. “If that wasn’t your hardest, I hate to imagine how a real punch from you would feel like…”

Caspar grins nervously. “Uh, is that a compliment? I’ll take it, thanks! But are you good? Do you wanna stop?”

Linhardt is usually a very practical and pragmatic person, but he is also unfortunately prideful, and going down after two hits is too pathetic, even for him. He waves Caspar off, and Caspar backs away to give him space, watching in awe when Linhardt places a hand on his cheek and casts a Heal spell. Faith magic always seems to be weaker when he uses it on himself, and only the self-healing properties of his natural Crest are any real help, but for now it should at least ease the throbbing pain. “I’m fine. I’m not that frail, Caspar.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s with the disbelief? I can handle a bit more.” Actually Linhardt’s not sure how much exactly he _can_ handle, but that’s hardly going to stop him. Anything to keep Caspar from asking for Hubert’s help. “Come on. I won’t be as distracted now.”

Caspar still looks hesitant, but eventually nods and grins. “Alright, Lin! But if you get too roughed up, you asked for it!”

By dinnertime Linhardt can barely stand, much less walk all the way to the dining hall. Caspar helps him on his back, and though Linhardt’s feet threaten to drag on the ground, Caspar somehow brings Linhardt back to his dorm (thankfully _not_ on the second floor), runs off to the dining hall, and brings back a plate of sweet buns and vegetable stir-fry for Linhardt, although he can’t bring himself to move from lying face-down in bed. “How was that? Training feels great, right?” Caspar asks, digging into his own food.

“Absolutely not,” Linhardt grumbles into his pillow. He’s starving, but his exhaustion outweighs the need to eat. He doesn’t think he can even lift a fork right now. “I don’t understand how you can deal with this day in and day out and not die of tiredness.”

“Aww, don’t be that way, Lin. It gets easier with time! And you build up endurance too, which you don’t have a whole lot of, unless it involves staying up all night to read.” Caspar munches on what smells like teppanyaki before speaking again. “But, y’know, I’m really glad you, uh… agreed and all. I mean, I was nervous at first ‘cause of what happened yesterday, but…”

Linhardt lifts his face off the pillow. Caspar’s staring down at his lap, his cheeks are going pink, and certainly not from exertion. “I-I mean,” Caspar stammers, “you’re always with me when I train, but you’re usually just sitting at the side and reading or napping or something, so it’s like you’re also _not_ really with me, you know? And then I feel bad ‘cause you could be at the library or in your room, somewhere more comfortable, instead of sitting on the floor or the grass, so… so… I’m… just glad we got to do something together!”

It takes a long few seconds to process the words. Once Linhardt finally understands, he clears his throat and pushes himself to sit up in bed, absently smoothing down his ruffled hair. “Well… well, that’s nice of you,” he mumbles, feeling his own face growing warm. “You know you don’t have to feel guilty about it, though, right? I can read and sleep anywhere. It doesn’t bother me.” That’s a lie—his backside does get sore after sitting on the floor for so long sometimes—but Linhardt isn’t about to _say_ that. He can be emotionally intelligent sometimes.

Caspar frowns. “You don’t fool me, Lin.”

Oh, well. It was worth a try. “Even so, I don’t mind. It is for you, after all.”

Even with only the lantern for light, Linhardt can very clearly see how Caspar’s entire face goes beet-red. “What the—d-don’t just _say things_ like that!”

Linhardt hums, more amused than he’d like to admit. “Is it embarrassing?”

“I—” Caspar sighs and shakes his head. “ _Anyway,_ I just wanted to say that. So, uh, yeah, thanks. For today. It was fun! I think it’s the first time we really trained together.” He pumps his fist in the air, nearly spilling half his dinner on Linhardt’s room floor. “I heard there’s a nice bookshop in town! If you need someone to carry all the books you wanna buy, you know who to call!”

A bookshop? Linhardt will definitely have to see that for himself this weekend, then. “Thank you, Caspar,” he says, sincerely, feeling his lips curve up into a smile. For some reason it feels like he hasn’t smiled in a long while, and the change is welcome. “I’ll take you up on that soon.”

For some reason Caspar stares at him for what feels like almost a full minute, before clearing his throat and averting his gaze, a little pout on his face. “I mean… yeah, of course,” he mutters. “If it’s for you…”

Linhardt looks up, pausing halfway from lifting a sweet bun to his mouth. “What was that?”

Caspar colors again. “Nothing! Wait, why are you eating dessert before dinner? Dang it, Lin, you really need to take better care of yourself!”

“Ugh, I don’t understand the problem. I’m going to eat both in the end, so why does it matter in what order they go in my stomach…”

Four years ago, Linhardt killed. And killed. And killed. And killed. The blood on his hands had been so cold, and even now the ribbon in his hair serves as a permanent reminder of what he had done. He cannot tell if it has been stained red-black with his own blood or if it came from the men he had murdered, but it is all the same in the end: he had bled. He had killed. What does it matter whose blood it was? The ribbon will never be white again.

In Zanado, the Red Canyon, a scuffle leads to Linhardt winding up on the sharp end of a bandit’s sword when he had previously been safely behind Petra and Ferdinand. The bandit must see the petrified look on his face, because he grins and holds out one grubby hand. “Come on, yer just a kid. A noble too, am I right? You got the looks for it. How about ye just hand over all yer gold, and no one gets hurt?”

Linhardt lets his thoughts wander for a moment: Miasma? Mire? Which would work better in this situation? There are steep cliffs all around the place, and though the bandit is taller and bigger than him, Linhardt doesn’t plan on pushing him around anyway. In fact, maybe he wouldn’t have to do anything at all.

“A tempting offer,” Linhardt says, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

When he had been training with Caspar—and every single time he had practiced by himself in the Hevring estate garden—he had closed his eyes before each spell, out of fear he would see something he had no control over: that brilliant white light, shining out of one of his eyes, or, worse, materializing in the air above whatever patch of soil he experimented on, that Crest glowing bright and cruel over the darkness. The magic seemed to be able to freely choose when it would manifest itself and make his pathetic spells a sudden outburst of power: a weak Swarm spell that usually only called on some struggling earthworms would draw in every single insect in the garden, for instance. Father had been stung by some overenthusiastic bees more than once.

Linhardt tilts his head to the side just slightly. They’d passed by an anthill earlier on the way here, hadn’t they? Petra had commented on how she had never seen such a large species, even in Brigid, and Bernadetta mumbled something about how they were violently red, too.

He keeps his eyes wide open when he calls on the power he can feel simmering underground. The bandit, halfway through charging towards him and probably impaling Linhardt’s chest with his sword or something, falters at the pulse of dark magic around Linhardt’s palm. “What tricks you thinkin’ of playin’, huh?” he snorts.

 _Hmm…_ not as quickly as Linhardt would like. _Where are you now?_

There’s a humming in the air, faint at first before it grows loud enough to sound more like a continuous vibration of the very wind itself. _Patience,_ the magic rumbles.

And then—the ground explodes.

Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. The ground beneath the bandit quivers, once, then falls away under the onslaught that is thousands of huge red ants, some of them engorged by the dark magic to become the size of Linhardt’s hand. The bandit screams, of course—Linhardt cannot imagine someone reacting any other way—first in surprise and then in pain, when the insects clamber up to his bared arms and begin to feast.

Linhardt watches blankly when the man drops his sword and tries to run, but when the ants reach up to his face, there doesn’t seem to be much hope. His original plan was to have the bandit panic enough to run blindly right off one of the numerous cliffs, but it looks like there’s no need for that anymore.

He turns away and lets the ants eat in peace. There is no blood on his hands this time, but his palms feel cold all the same.

In the weeks following Linhardt’s return to Father, after that harrowing week in the basement, he could not bring himself to look at either his hands nor in the mirror, for fear of what he would see: the blood on his palms not washed out, the pure-white hair drained of all color. He could barely eat without throwing it back up, because all he could taste then was mire; he could not leave the house, because all he could hear then was the buzz of insects; he could not even breathe, sometimes, when the darkness of night felt too much like the darkness of the dungeon, and his lungs took in more miasma than oxygen.

Linhardt could not say when the magic began to speak. It simply began, one day, and Linhardt accepted it; magic has always seemed alive, after all, and so it did not particularly surprise him to hear its voice for the first time. It was loud and soft at once, coming from everywhere and nowhere. _Rise,_ it said. _Your place is not to lie here frightened of your own shadow._

“Leave me alone,” he whispered to the wall of his bedroom.

_I cannot. I am a part of you, now._

“I don’t want you.” His room was so cold, so cold. He wrapped the blankets tighter around himself, but somehow he only grew colder, colder, colder. “Leave me alone, _please._ ”

Silence. Then, slowly, _You cannot be rid of me so easily. At least work for it, if you hate me so much._

Linhardt lifted his head off his pillow. “I can… get rid of you?”

_I do not know. But if it was possible to transfer my power from one vessel to another, then surely it can be removed as well._

Linhardt did not train to be strong. There is no glory in strength, in overpowering someone weaker, in killing for sport or killing out of casual whim. Instead he spent day after day in Mother’s dead garden, practicing the spells he had been taught, not to strengthen them but to weaken them, to _control_ them: the roaring hurricane of miasma dwindled down to a tiny bit of fog that floated obediently above his palm, and the vicious predator of mire turned meek as a mouse under his fingers. He learned the Swarm spell through coincidence alone, when he had panicked at a bee that drifted too close and sent it whirling in dizzying circles through the air.

He could not bring himself to call on the banshee again; and anyway, Father would have heard it. There was no one to practice Nosferatu on, either. Perhaps that was for the best.

There is fear when he handles this magic, a fear so broad that Linhardt can only attempt at describing it: the fear of losing control again, the fear of seeing the blinding light of a Crest, the fear that somehow it will attract Solon back to him and endanger not just Caspar, this time, but Byleth and Edelgard and all the rest. Yet somehow, when he looks back at the body of the bandit now a ways away behind him, Linhardt cannot find it in himself to feel anything, and this is what terrifies him most. Is this all he is, now, nothing but a killer whose magic rips apart anything and anyone he touches? Will everyone around him turn out like those bodies as well, organs already exposed for the waiting vultures to swoop down and peck at?

 _There are still more spells you have yet to learn,_ the magic tells him. _I have heard rumors that the Church bans certain books and tomes from publication and circulation because of how they are imbued with dark magic… are you not interested in finding out where more of these may be?_

“Interesting,” Linhardt murmurs. He can see Dorothea up ahead, trying to fend off two bandits at once, and he hurries to cast a Heal spell and fix up the large gash on her left arm. “But I could not care less for the spells. There might be a method detailed on removing a Crest from myself.”

The magic falls silent. Good. Linhardt picks up the pace.

Byleth and Edelgard have already taken down the bandit leader, and Linhardt spends most of the walk back to the monastery cleaning up everyone’s injuries—an arrow embedded in Hubert’s thigh, a deep wound on Ferdinand’s shoulder, Bernadetta’s twisted ankle. The latter stammers out a thank-you and, “D-Do you have any injuries, Linhardt…? I-I don’t know much about first-aid, but I have some supplies!” She fishes out a box of what Linhardt’s certain are bandages.

He shakes his head. “I’m unhurt, thank you.” This might only be the second or third time he’s spoken to Bernadetta, the elusive recluse—she never recites in class, keeping her head down and staring at the textbook, and she seems to spend all her time in her room. Not that Linhardt can judge her for that; he certainly does the same sometimes, especially when he’s stayed up late reading.

Now that he thinks about it, isn’t she of House Varley? Her Crest must be that of Indech’s, then, while Ferdinand’s is of Cichol. Linhardt frowns to himself. Indech, Cichol… and Cethleann and Macuil in one. The Crests of the Four Saints gathered all together…

“U-Um. Are you… okay?” Bernadetta asks, so soft Linhardt almost doesn’t hear her. “A-Are you upset? Did I do something wrong?”

“What? No.” Linhardt sighs and shakes his head. “I was just thinking.”

“N-No—I b-bet you hate me already,” Bernadetta whimpers, pulling away from Linhardt. “I’m s-sorry! I won’t get in your way! I’m sorry!” And then she runs off to cling to Byleth’s side instead.

Linhardt stares at her back, puzzled. She had concluded all that from one frown? What a strange one. More importantly, Linhardt wonders if Solon and his people might be targeting either Ferdinand or Bernadetta next because of their Crests. Certainly they haven’t already been caught and experimented on, since it would be obvious otherwise, but perhaps having a Crest of one of the Four Saints would make them more viable test subjects. After all, they had taken Linhardt because of Cethleann’s Crest, hadn’t they? One thing he still can’t quite understand is why it had been so important that his Crest have healing properties. For people like them, Linhardt’s of the opinion that they wouldn’t care about their weapons so long as they can fight…

It’s only when they return to the monastery and Linhardt is picking out some books in the library that he realizes he is, in fact, an idiot.

He’s at her side and speaking before she can even startle. “Lysithea, am I right?” Linhardt says, as way of greeting. The only reason he hasn’t lost his grip on the books in his arms right now is from pure instinct. “My, I can’t believe I never realized it before. I should have known from how you wield dark magic and how formidable a mage you are.”

Lysithea blinks dizzily. She’s got a book on advanced reason magic in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other, full of notes that Linhardt knows at a glance would be the perfect challenge to read. “I-I—what on earth are you talking about? Have we met?”

“Of course we have. My name is Linhardt.” He even tries extending a hand to be polite, but quickly realizes it would be more of a hassle for Lysithea and retracts his arm. “But never mind that. Have you been keeping it a secret from others? I imagine it must be difficult, especially if one manifests right after the other in battle. Does anyone else know? Claude seems like the type of person to figure it out without needing to ask. Or am I the only one?”

“Would you slow down?” Lysithea snaps. She hurries over to the nearest table and sets her belongings atop it, then turns around to face Linhardt with her hands on her hips. “I have no idea what you seem so excited about, but I think you’ve got the wrong person. I mean, we’ve never even spoken.”

“We’re speaking now,” Linhardt points out. “And no, I don’t have the wrong person. You’re like me, Lysithea.”

“Like…” Lysithea frowns. “You?”

“I should have realized it ages ago. It somehow just never crossed my mind that there may be others like me,” Linhardt says, already feeling himself bubbling up with more to say, more to share, but at the confusion on Lysithea’s face, he forces himself to calm down and speak a little slower. “I thought you would understand right away. My apologies. But what I mean is that you and I… we are the same. You have two Crests as well, do you not?”

Lysithea steps away from him like she’d been burned. “H-How do you—wait—as… as well?”

“As well.” Linhardt holds up both his hands, palms up—the Crests of Cethleann and Macuil flicker into being, hovering above his hands in dark blue light. They’re mere images, nothing like the actual manifestation of either of them, but it gets the message along all the same, judging by how Lysithea’s eyes widen to near-impossible sizes. “How about you? Don’t tell me I’ve somehow got this whole thing wrong.”

She glances furtively around the library, but it’s already past dinnertime and nearing curfew—it’s only the two of them here, while Tomas is probably deeper inside. “No, you’re right,” Lysithea whispers. “I’m not going to be as fancy as you, so I’ll just say it. I, um… the minor Crest of Charon—”

“Ah, impressive! I’ve read that the Crest of Charon can increase affinity with dark magic, particularly with certain spells, but I’ve yet to find any exact details and research to back that theory up—”

“ _Quiet,_ ” Lysithea hisses, swatting his arm. “That, and the major Crest of Gloucester. Yes, like Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, for some inconceivable reason.”

Linhardt doesn’t even recognize this Lorenz person’s name, but he _does_ know Gloucester. “Is that true? No wonder your magic power surpasses all of our own despite your age. The Crest of Gloucester can strengthen spells on occasion, am I right? Macuil’s does much the same, in fact, although there is far less published research on it in comparison—”

“Okay, okay, _slow down,_ ” Lysithea grinds out. Linhardt sighs but obediently falls quiet. “First of all, I like to think my magical prowess is due to my own skill and hard work rather than some Crest I didn’t ask for, and second—second, well.” Here she falters, confusion once again replacing the previous indignance in her expression. “How is this possible…? No, I suppose it’s only natural they would have moved on to more experiments, but… Tell me, when did this happen to you?”

Linhardt folds his arms. “It was four years ago. We are talking of the same people, yes? Those strange dark mages. Does the name ‘Solon’ mean anything to you?”

Lysithea shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. I was only two years old then, and I only remember the fear and pain I felt.” She shudders, casting Linhardt a skeptical glance. “But four years ago… the memories must still be fresh in your mind, then.”

“Unfortunately,” Linhardt agrees, voice low. He spends no shortage of nights twisting and turning in the sheets, begging them not to take Caspar away from him. So far he hasn’t had either of his neighbors ask him about the noise, but he’s sure it’s only a matter of time. “You were little more than a toddler then. It seems their cruelty knows no limits.”

Lysithea looks down. “Yes. But—this means they were still active as recently as four years ago. Could they possibly still be conducting experiments along this manner out there?”

“Oh, certainly. But worry not,” Linhardt assures her, at the flicker of unease on her face. “The monastery is tightly guarded, after all, and I’m certain you are strong enough to face them now and take them on if you have to. Simply superb, what I’ve seen of your magic…”

Lysithea colors an embarrassed pink. “Do you say that to all the other mages here? Er, but that’s not important. I’m not afraid they might come for me, really. They’re the ones who lost interest after I turned out this way.”

“What?” Linhardt frowns. They’d gone to great lengths to keep him under their control until the very end, and the mage had even said they would find him again no matter where he hid. “How come? I imagine they’d be ecstatic upon a successful experiment, after all.”

Lysithea shrugs. “Isn’t it obvious? They have no use for a weapon that would be lucky to last more than 20 years of age.”

Linhardt stumbles back.

She had already been moving on to ask another question, but she pauses at his sudden movement, looks up at him.

Her face falls. “They didn’t tell you?”

“20… years?”

“Linhardt.” Lysithea hurries forward, placing a hand on his wrist. “Calm down. That—That was their estimate for me, yes, but as you said, I was just a child, I didn’t—”

Linhardt brushes her hand away. He can feel the magic burning at his hands, threatening to rise from his skin, and he digs his nails into his palms to let the pain steady him just slightly, let him grab back control over the darkness. “I… I’m sorry,” he manages. “I wasn’t expecting that. I… I never knew, no. They never told me. They were thrilled about me, in fact, used my best friend as hostage to keep me under them. I escaped after a week, but…”

He swallows. Could they have been purposefully keeping this supposed shortened lifespan a secret from him? No, he can’t see a reason for them to do so—telling him he’d only have a scant few years to live would only have shattered the shards of hope inside him at the time, after all, and he most likely would have given up on trying to get away. The most plausible answer here is that they would have told him eventually, but he had escaped before they could.

Is that why they’ve left him alone so far? Because they would have no use for a weapon with only three years left to live, now?

“Linhardt?” Lysithea calls. He blinks, trying to bring himself back to the present, but the world keeps spinning around him. “Uh, um. Why don’t you sit down?”

She pulls out a chair for him, and Linhardt collapses on it gratefully—any longer and his legs would have given out on him. _Three years…_ at _best._ How can this be? Death has crossed his mind far too many times to count, but it has always been at the hands of Solon or any of the other dark mages, not at the mercy of time. Lysithea had this information thrust upon her 13 years ago, so she must have accepted it by now. But for Linhardt, for him to find out he has _three years left—_

How is he going to tell Caspar?

He’s not sure how long he sits there, staring at the wood grains on the table, but at some point he lifts his gaze to see Lysithea fidgeting with the hem of her uniform. “I didn’t know,” she murmurs. “I thought they would have told you…”

Linhardt shakes his head. “It’s alright. Just… I find it strange. There has to be a reason they wanted to keep me when the experiment was successful. If I truly am to die in three years—”

“D-Don’t _say_ that,” Lysithea protests.

“—if I truly am to die in three years,” Linhardt repeats, “then it makes no sense for them to have gone to such lengths to trap me back then.” Most of his memories of that week are muddled, except for a select few that remain as clear as the day he had experienced them, but if he thinks hard enough… had they mentioned something about a lifespan? About previous experiments? He can’t remember, only that they _must_ have spoken about it in front of him.

Already he knows he will find nothing from books about their kind. No, if he wants answers, he will have to personally get some from them.

“Caspar mentioned hearing rumors about these people,” Linhardt says, catching Lysithea’s interest once more. “Which means they’re almost certainly still active, then, and perhaps even close by. I suspect it is only a matter of time now before they target something or someone in the monastery, since I can hardly imagine they bear any good will against the goddess.”

Lysithea worries on her lower lip. “Well, that’s worrying. But as you said earlier, the monastery is guarded well, with the Knights of Seiros and everything. I don’t think any real harm will come to us as long as we stay under—”

“Oh, no, I’m not afraid they might come for me,” Linhardt says, mirroring Lysithea’s earlier words. “ _I_ am coming for _them._ ”

“And that is why Lysithea is joining the Black Eagles House, Professor,” Linhardt says, feeling quite proud of himself. It had taken him forever to wrangle Lysithea and drag her over to Byleth’s room, and the sparks of dark magic that keep stinging his arms are going to be a real pain in the morning, but at least he made it out alive somehow. “You agree, yes? I’m glad we had this conversation.”

“Um, stop right there,” Byleth says, pulling Linhardt back by the shoulder with one hand while rubbing at his eyes with the other. He’s dressed in his pajamas, which is quite the sight to see. Lysithea can’t stop staring at him like she’s looking at some sort of cryptid. “What ‘conversation?’ You woke me up in the middle of the night, talked nonstop for about fifteen minutes, and now you’re making decisions for the class?”

Linhardt scratches his cheek. Had it really been fifteen minutes? He could have sworn it was only five, maybe six. “Well, I just think it’d be more convenient if she were nearby. Discussing matters of our shared history would be easier.”

Byleth sighs. “Look, the school year’s barely begun. Transferring to another class… well, no other student has done that yet,” he admits, “so I’m not familiar with the procedure… but usually the House leaders have a say in this too. And the professors. Like me.” He gives Linhardt a tired look. “I also imagine they talk about this at a reasonable hour of day.”

“It _is_ day,” Linhardt argues. “Early morning. Oh, does it matter?”

“ _Tomorrow,_ Linhardt,” Byleth says, and closes the door in his face. Ugh, he really has _no_ sense of manners.

Linhardt turns to Lysithea with a frown. “I suppose we’ll have to talk about this tomorrow, then. What a shame. But you do want to join our class, right? Byleth—er, our professor is still learning, but we focus more on magic than we do on other subjects. I’m certain you’ll learn more from us than you would in the Golden Deer House.”

Lysithea bristles. “You make it sound like we’re inferior! But, um.” She sighs. “I’ll admit most of the lessons are on physical weapons rather than magic, so I’ve had to do more self-learning than anything. Fine, I’ll sit in for a few lectures and see how it goes. I have quite the high set of standards, so I won’t stand for any slip-ups during class, alright?”

Oh, dear. Byleth is terribly prone to slip-ups, like staring into space in the middle of a sentence, knocking an entire stack of books onto the floor, or sometimes spelling a word wrong on the board and, upon realizing his mistake, dropping a huge, “Ah, well, mother of fuck,” and then correcting the word like nothing had happened. Linhardt fondly remembers Ferdinand’s horrified expression and Edelgard’s startled one. Hmm… if he wants to impress Lysithea enough to get her into the class, Byleth is going to need a bit of help in the teaching area.

“Not a problem,” Linhardt promises. “He has a natural affinity for teaching.” He does not, but Lysithea doesn’t need to know that. At the very least, Byleth learns fast. “In any case, today was quite… a day. You should get going to your room now.”

“Ah… alright,” she mumbles, looking around at their surroundings. “Right. Fine. Um… I’ll be going. Good—Goodnight, Linhardt. It was… nice… to know you.”

Lysithea summons a small tongue of fire over her palm and scampers off into the darkness before Linhardt can ask if she’d like him to walk her to her dorm. Oh, well. Now he supposes it’s time for the next part of his schedule for the night.

He tilts his head, lets the dormant magic inside him stir in attention. _You mentioned spellbooks on dark magic. Have any clues for me?_

_Oh, interested now, are you?_

Linhardt wanders aimlessly through the monastery. The place is huge—there are still areas he hasn’t discovered yet, and he’s sure they’re hiding something underground. A treasure vault, maybe, or historical artifacts that may give him some hints as to the real origin of Crests. The goddess bestowing such powers upon humans just isn’t a satisfactory enough explanation. _Of course. I finally have some sort of goal, along with quite the time limit, so I may as well make the most of it._

The magic is quiet for a moment, before saying, _There are rumors the monastery is hiding secrets underground, as you are thinking. Surely there’s an entrance around here._

“Hm.” Linhardt grins, but it isn’t one of happiness as much as it is one of determination. Perhaps this is how Caspar feels when he’s in the midst of battle and he’s feeling that rush of adrenaline coursing through him, only for Linhardt it isn’t battle and bloodshed that sates the hunger within him, but the pursuit of knowledge. “This shouldn’t be too hard.”

This late at night—or, like he’d mentioned, this early in the morning—there’s barely anyone around to stop him from poking his nose into places he probably shouldn’t be looking in, and in the darkness it’s easy enough to avoid the patrolling knights’ watchful eyes, especially in the black uniform… although his white hair really makes this much more troublesome than it should, considering how it stands out under the moonlight.

Linhardt sighs, reaching up to tug at a strand of white. In situations like these, he really does miss his normal hair. If he manages to remove the second Crest inside him… will his hair return to green, too? Caspar used to tell him the green reminded him of tree leaves and spring, though he’d stopped four years ago, for obvious reasons, but Linhardt wonders if he still remembers the exact shade Linhardt’s hair had been. It’s ridiculous that something like that would mean so much to him, and yet…

“Did you find them?” a voice barks. Linhardt shrinks away, curling up tighter behind the pillar he’s using to hide. “There’s someone running around late at night, isn’t there?”

“Yes and no, sir! I mean, no and yes? Sir? There is someone around, but we haven’t found them yet, sir!”

“Well, get to it, then! It might be an intruder trying to steal away with the monastery’s treasures!”

So there _are_ treasures in here? Linhardt files that information away for future consideration. For now, he has to find a way out of here and get to somewhere safer before the patrolling knights find him. But it would be too dangerous to try and move now, with how close those knights sound… Linhardt frowns to himself, glancing around. One end of the corridor he’s in ends at a wall, but the other end is darkness.

What does he have to lose? He takes off at a run, and winces when he hears the knights shout, “There! After them!”

He can’t run for too long—he can already feel his chest heaving, his lungs struggling to get a decent breath of air, and his legs are threatening to fall apart at the seams. But he can’t get caught now, not when the night’s just begun—Linhardt turns a corner, catches sight of a peculiar spot on the wall. Cracked? Broken? No, something about its make just seems off, somehow, and it stands out against the rest of the—

“Psst!” a voice hisses—Linhardt almost tumbles head-first onto the stone floor. “In here!”

He’s not even surprised when the spot on the wall _moves,_ revealing it to be some sort of, what, door? Passageway? Whatever it is, he’ll take it. Linhardt squeezes into the tight entrance, nearly losing his pants in the process, but a pair of unbelievably strong arms help him through and close the wall-door just as the faint footsteps of the knights tell Linhardt they’ve turned the corner. “What?” he hears. “They were just here, weren’t they?”

“Search the area. They can’t have gone far!”

“They won’t hear us from here,” the voice from earlier says. It sounds much closer now, and Linhardt hastily backs away, pressing up against a wall behind him. Dark, cramped, cold—he has to take several more deep breaths before he can let himself relax a little. Then he wrinkles his nose; this scent… “What’s got you on their bad side? Aren’t you a student here?”

Linhardt clears his throat. It’s too dark in… wherever they are to see anything, which means this might well be a trap. Then again, this person _had_ helped him hide, so… “I was looking for something. May have poked around in places I shouldn’t have.”

“Hmm. I know a neat cloaking spell if you need it.” A pause. “You do know how to cast magic, right? I can smell it all over you.”

 _Smell?_ “Wait, you…”

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t even introduce myself, did I?” A spark, a flicker, and then a small ball of fire comes to life above a palm. Linhardt follows the hand to a wrist, to an elbow, to a shoulder, all the way up to a round face and pinkish-red hair. Linhardt’s not sure if she’s doing it on purpose, but the fire she lifts up keeps dancing, never staying still for too long, and he follows the shape it forms: two circles, five spines. _A Crest long lost to history,_ Linhardt remembers reading, in one of his many textbooks.

“The name’s Hapi.” She blinks at him, and _now_ Linhardt places the scent all around them: it’s been years since he last encountered this, the smell not of miasma or mire but of death, of rotting corpses and dried blood and dirt under fingernails. “What’s yours?”

Linhardt stares at her. “Linhardt,” he eventually says, but all he can really think of is, _Since when did dark magic become such a trend among us?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself this would only be 4 chapters, with pre-timeskip/academy phase taking up one chapter. well... that idea's long gone now, i guess...


	3. jörmungandr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Also known as “the world serpent,” Jörmungandr is supposedly a mythical sea serpent that was born from a giant and is large enough to encircle the world’s ocean and grasp its own tail. Releasing its tail brings about the world’s end._ ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rmungandr))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for once i got nothing to say except hope you enjoy the chapter as usual!! it is 12am please pardon any embarrassing typos

“…so most scholars agree that wind magic,” Byleth reads from his notes, “is the weakest element in reason magic, but also both the most versatile and volatile, as compared to fire and thunder. Aside from the theories circulating that thunder magic may be harnessed to power certain machinery…” He frowns, pauses, then flips to the next page. “But to return to the usages of wind magic…”

Linhardt sighs in disappointment: he had been hoping Byleth would read the rest of the paper, considering how long Linhardt had spent gathering information on thunder magic and piecing together different theories and hypotheses, but perhaps he should have expected this when the lecture today was meant to be focused on wind from the start. Oh, well.

He chances a glance at Lysithea sitting beside Edelgard at the front of the classroom. Linhardt can’t see her face from here, obviously, but she _is_ sitting straight up and scribbling down everything Byleth is saying, so Linhardt considers this a win.

“You’re not taking notes?” Caspar asks, voice a hushed whisper. “I mean, you’re awake for once, and it’s about wind magic!”

“Oh, I don’t need to,” Linhardt says. Of course he doesn’t need to. The notes Byleth is reading from are his.

If Linhardt’s being honest, he doubts he _really_ needed to go this far to impress Lysithea; after enough badgering Linhardt’s sure he would have been able to wear her down enough and get her to join their class. He’s noticed the admiring looks she casts Edelgard sometimes, and after frequently training with Hubert and Dorothea, he’s sure it would have only been a matter of time. But after a bit of observation, in both the library and the training grounds, the amount of time she spends with Annette from the Blue Lions House was worrying. If he didn’t act fast enough, Lysithea might have been snatched up by Dimitri.

Well, _snatched up_ is probably a bit of an exaggeration. And maybe Linhardt shouldn’t be treating her like an object to be vied and won over. But it’s hard not to, when her natural skill and intelligence are on the scale one cannot find so easily elsewhere, and moreso their shared history. He allows himself a small smile—yes, this will do. And then the two of them can get to work on searching for more information on those pesky dark mages that had ruined their lives.

Caspar nudges him with his elbow. “What’s with the smile? You look like a creep, Lin.”

“A creep?” Linhardt repeats. “Surely not. Is my smile that unsettling?”

“Uh, it’s not really your smile, more like… never mind,” Caspar says, shaking his head. “Anyway, who knew Professor Byleth was so good at magic this whole time? Last I heard he was still struggling with the Thunder spell! I was kind of hoping he’d never learn it, actually…”

Linhardt hums in acknowledgement. “Although he’s reading directly from my—ahem, those notes. It looks like he didn’t memorize them in the end…”

After class, Lysithea hounds Byleth down despite his pathetic attempts to escape to his dorm and badgers him with questions about the lecture, probably testing to see if he actually knows a thing about his teaching material. Linhardt lingers at the doorway, wondering if he should step in and help, but right now he’s brimming with far too much excitement to stick around for too long, and he’s sure Byleth can mumble his way out of this predicament. Linhardt bids Caspar goodbye and asks him to save a plate after dinner, then speeds up on the way to the entrance to Abyss.

 _Abyss._ He rolls the word around in his head, mouthing it to himself. So those rumors about an entire underground society were right after all. Is he the first among the students to know about it? Surely not, if he had discovered its existence so early on in the school year. But Hapi had made him promise not to tell anyone else, in exchange for safe passage underground, and Linhardt recognizes a good deal when he sees it.

When he arrives at the wall entrance, he glances around as casually as possible—it’s at the back of the monastery, so there are less people around, but Linhardt waves a hand and casts the cloaking spell Hapi had taught him anyway. It seems to be some sort of mix between the Silence and Warp spells, combining their different properties together to form something else entirely. He hasn’t had the time to thoroughly look into its composition just yet, but it’s only because he’s been so overwhelmed by the absolute treasure trove of information the Abyss has provided him with over the past few days that even a fascinating spell like this is but an afterthought compared to everything else he’s discovering.

Linhardt clambers into the entrance, covering his nose with his wrist and breathing deep—he had rubbed mint herbs over the sleeve of his uniform this morning just for this, and he lets the fresh scent steady him, remind him of where he is. The darkness isn’t so intimidating then, and when he opens his eyes it’s to the faint light of a lantern up ahead, one he had hung up himself.

He’s safe. He’s here. Not there.

The tunnel is a bit of a walk, but even physical exertion can’t obstruct Linhardt this time. He even jogs, as he’s done since the first time he arrived here, until he gets to the entrance to the underground city. A shadow in the corner shifts, their movements smooth as a snake, before those flashing eyes reveal themselves. “Who dares—seriously? It’s you again?”

Linhardt smiles in greeting. “Hello, Yuri. I’m with Hapi.”

“Yes, I know that,” Yuri, leader of the Ashen Wolves, sighs. He folds his arms across his chest, glaring at Linhardt the same way he’s done for each one of Linhardt’s past visits. “You’re _really_ starting to get on my nerves. Not much time left before you start living down here with the rest of us, I reckon.”

“You’re hilarious,” Linhardt says, still smiling. “Will you let me through now? I’m very busy today.”

“Of course you are.” Yuri squints at him a little longer, though Linhardt’s sure it’s just for show. “Ugh, fine. I can’t do anything if you’ve got Hapi’s approval. Hurry it up or I’ll have to kick you out again.”

Linhardt happily strolls past Yuri and takes the now-familiar path to what the Abyssians call the ‘Shadow Library,’ which is a very fancy way to call a place where all the banned books end up. The underground city had been a bit unsettling the first few times, but eventually Linhardt can’t really bring himself to be frightened of anyone here anymore, considering it’s now more or less public knowledge that he’s friends with Hapi, who, it turns out, is just as formidable a dark mage as Lysithea and Hubert.

A few nights ago, when Linhardt had found himself trapped and on the cusp of being reported to Seteth for being out and about in the evening, Hapi had helped him hide from the knights and ended up bringing him into Abyss. To be fair, he had sort of pushed her into it—“Where are we? What is this place? A hole in the wall?” he’d demanded, especially upon recognizing the smell of dark magic all around her.

“Hole in the wall? Is that what this is?” Hapi sounded amused. “Oh, I guess you surface-dwellers wouldn’t know anything about us. You’ll keep this a secret, won’t you?”

“Surface-dwellers…” He tried backing away even further, but he was already pressed up against the wall behind him, and he had no idea how to slide open the entrance he had come in through to escape. “Are you… the underground city… it exists?”

“Ah, so there are rumors of us after all.”

“An underground city under the monastery.” It sounded too fantastical to be true. But then again, Crests are essentially some special property within a person’s blood that improved their performance in the battlefield and could only be activated under strangely specific conditions, so perhaps an underground city isn’t as fantastical as it is in a world like this. “Will you show me? I didn’t think it would be this easy to find.”

“Hmm…” Hapi frowned. “I only helped ya out ‘cause I thought you needed it. Didn’t exactly plan on giving you a tour down here. And you totally smell.”

Linhardt was offended, despite himself. “Smell?”

“Y’know, of dark magic. Like me.” She looked at him like he was an idiot. “But a lot weaker. I gotta say, if you’re practicing dark magic, doing it in moderation ain’t the way to go. If you want to use it to its maximum potential, you may as well go all-out, none of that self-control stuff.”

Linhardt felt like each one of those words had been specially made to fire arrows in his heart. How did this person, whom Linhardt had met not five minutes ago, somehow manage to strike every weakness he fought tooth and nail to hide from the rest of the world? “I… didn’t choose to be a dark mage, if you must know. I don’t even like fighting. Self-control is the only way for me to stay sane if I’m to continue living like this…”

Hapi looked bored already. “That so?” was all she offered. Linhardt knew right away he would sooner die than tell Hapi anything about his past. “Mm, well… since you’re already here, I guess it shouldn’t hurt. Just don’t tell anyone, alright?”

And what was Linhardt supposed to say to that— _no?_

Today he returns the books he had stayed up all night reading, though there isn’t an actual librarian around to facilitate the borrowing of books, so Linhardt just takes care to return the texts to the shelves he had taken them from. Then he sets around gathering more, picking the most interesting-looking ones and piling them up until he has a decent stack in his arms, before heading over to the big, cluttered desk to set the books down on, grab a nearby chair, pull out his notebook, and get to work.

Most of the spells he finds in the books, he’s never even heard or read about before, and there are so _many_ of them: Luna, Dark Spikes, Hades, Death. And those are just four out of _dozens_ Linhardt’s copied, analyzed, and picked apart the properties of until he’s fully understood them. It looks like almost all advanced dark magic spells are made out of various mixtures of Miasma, Mire, and Swarm, which means learning them might not be so challenging after all…

Linhardt pauses in his note-taking with a hum. He isn’t actively looking for more dark magic to learn, though; his ventures down in the Abyss and its Shadow Library are in pursuit of more information on Crests, but it’s hard when almost all the texts that may have been helpful are almost completely illegible from age or wear and tear. Surely there’s a spell that can recover torn pages? It sounds so terribly specific that Linhardt fears it may not exist, but then again, attacking via swarm of insects doesn’t exactly sound like the most practical spell either. Perhaps…

No, to start, how did dark magic even come into origin? Reason and faith were said to be divine gifts of the goddess, granting humanity the ability to discern for themselves the answers to problems through reason, while also the ability to praise and worship the goddess through their faith. It sounds like, in Byleth’s words, a load of bullshit, but Linhardt isn’t about to say that in a place where either Seteth or Archbishop Rhea herself could hear him, and religious as it is, it’s still an explanation. Yet he’s never found out just how exactly dark magic originated.

Linhardt can’t imagine the goddess granting humanity with the ability to control the very darkness. Could it not be natural at all, but instead something manmade? And if so, could those dark mages, Solon’s colleagues, perhaps Solon’s _ancestors,_ have been the humans behind its creation?

 _You grow distracted,_ the magic purrs. It’s certainly been happier since Linhardt has taken to looking over the dark spells. _Is something the matter?_

 _No. I was just thinking._ Linhardt stares down at the words on the book’s pages. For some reason they’re starting to blur, and he blinks at the sudden wave of dizziness. Has he been here for too long again without realizing the time? Being underground means there aren’t any windows for Linhardt to look out of, so he has no way of knowing how much time he’s spent down here. If he’s gone too long, people might start to notice, and he’d rather not deal with being asked questions about this place.

 _Never mind that,_ the magic insists. Linhardt imagines it like a small spirit that insists on following him around, reading the book right along with him over his shoulder. _Look at this one. ‘Ruin.’ It acts like a homing missile, aiming specifically for the target’s weakest spot. What do you think? Or are you more interested in this: ‘Jormungand?’ It seems like a stronger and more reliable variation of the Miasma spell…_

Linhardt hums, meaning to ignore the magic and leave, but the illustration on the page catches his eye—a large, serpentine shape twisted and coiled around its victim, baring distinct fangs and a long, forked tongue not unlike that of an actual snake. According to some details scrawled beneath the figure, the regular and expected size of the Jormungand spell is two to three times that of an adult human male. _I’ve never seen any other students cast something like this. Are you sure this book didn’t belong in the fiction section?_

_Don’t be silly. There is nothing fictional about the information here. Look, it details experiments and the observed results. Lasting poison… Hm, so it was named after a mythical beast…_

_Never mind. You talk too much for something invisible._ Linhardt closes the book and stands up, gathering the volumes up in his arms again. He returns the few he had finished but keeps the rest tucked against his chest to bring back up to his room. _Aren’t you dark magic incarnate anyway? Surely you would know most of these already._

_You are mistaken. My knowledge only extends as far as yours, though I can help and guide you when you are in need._

_Is that so?_ Linhardt walks sedately, idly wondering what Caspar had saved him for dinner.

_Do you hate me?_

That gives him pause. _What brought this on?_

 _I remember you said it yourself, back when we had just met. You were but a child, then, more so than you are now._ It pauses again, and Linhardt tries to imagine how the magic might look as a spirit—definitely something black or purple, perhaps a will-o’-the-wisp floating beside his head. _You wanted nothing to do with me back then. Is it still the same, even now?_

Linhardt doesn’t hesitate. _Of course. I’ve only grown used to you. Do you think my feelings that day have dulled in the slightest?_ He still feels sick when he uses dark magic—the day he had trained with Caspar, he had waited for Caspar to leave his room before bolting towards his bathroom and spending the rest of the night in there, breathing in his own stink. When he had summoned those ants to kill the bandit on the Red Canyon, he’d had nightmares about it for almost a week afterwards, waking up sweating and shaking and phantom insects crawling all over his skin. His veins still pulse black, and his palms still freeze cold.

He closes his eyes. _I admit I do not resent you for what happened,_ he amends. _It was not your fault we came to be together. But I hate you all the same, for everything I’ve done and for everything I will continue to do. I have already killed five times._

 _You have only killed five times,_ the magic murmurs.

 _Five, fifty, five-hundred, it doesn’t matter._ The ribbon will never be white again, he had thought, and it applies still here. _The people who made me this way… I’ll find them again. I’ll hunt them down. I’m not the same frightened child from before, and I’m not letting them get their hands on Caspar—on anyone to use as a hostage against me again._

Linhardt sighs. He casts the cloaking spell again, then prods at the wall until it gives way and he can step back out onto the surface. It isn’t completely dark out just yet, but soldiers are going around lighting up lanterns, and people are beginning to filter in the dining hall, which must mean he’s just in time for dinner, for once. He’ll be saving Caspar the effort of filling up a second plate, then.

 _I’ll find them,_ he says again, _and once I get the answers out of them, I’ll be rid of you._

The magic is silent. For a while, Linhardt almost feels guilty, but he waves the feeling away.

There are more missions the Archbishop assigns their class—taking care of a mutiny by the Western Church, protecting the Holy Mausoleum from intruders, taking down a group of bandits led by some astray noble who morphed into a Demonic Beast before their very eyes. When they return to the monastery after that last one, the memory stays with Linhardt for the rest of the night—Miklan Gautier’s body cracking, bending, until it was no longer Miklan but a beast borne from the Hero’s Relic they had retrieved from his body after Byleth dealt the finishing blow with his new Creator Sword.

The Lance of Ruin… Linhardt sighs. He’d only been able to observe it up close for a short while, on the trek back to the monastery, and even then he hadn’t been able to take as many notes as he liked considering it was difficult to walk and write at the same time. He was hoping Byleth would choose to return it to Sylvain Gautier from the Blue Lions House rather than concede it to Rhea, but he’d gone with the latter instead, probably just to avoid her wrath or some sort. When will Linhardt next be able to do research on a Hero’s Relic then? He’s already combed Byleth’s Creator Sword from top to bottom the day he had been entrusted with it by Rhea.

Linhardt gives up on sleeping tonight. He pulls the blankets off, grabs a lantern, and changes into some loose clothes before slipping on a pair of sensible sneakers and heading out.

He normally avoids staying too late in the monastery library—strangely no matter how late it gets Tomas is always there, either reading or sorting books over and over again. Linhardt had tried seeing exactly what time he leaves the library to retire for the night, but he had never been able to gather the courage to wait long enough. But the Shadow Library down in Abyss never closes—Abyss never sleeps in general, with how rowdy the people down there are, and Yuri may act tough and intimidating, but Linhardt can tell they’re already getting used enough to each other.

Linhardt waves a hand—he’s getting better at casting the cloaking spell for longer periods of time—and heads for the entrance to Abyss, no longer needing to look over his shoulder for a patrolling knight. The lantern in his hands casts rays of light visible only to him, and he lets himself hum softly as he walks. Above head the evening breeze sends the leaves of trees rustling softly—

He nearly drops his lantern. “Flayn?”

Flayn, all 4 feet and 11 inches of her, jumps nearly a foot in the air. “W-Who goes there!?” she squeaks, the lamp in her own hand swinging wildly when she whirls around to face the general direction of Linhardt’s voice. She’s dressed in her regular clothes, though with an oversized black coat thrown over her shoulders—it’s probably Seteth’s.

Oh, right, cloaking spell. Linhardt dismisses it with a wave of his hand, which must be quite a fright considering Flayn jumps in shock again when he pops into thin air. “You—L-Linhardt?”

“Hello,” Linhardt greets. Thankfully there don’t seem to be any guards nearby, else Flayn’s high voice would have drawn them all here like sharks to blood in under a minute. “I know it’s a lovely evening and all, but is there a reason you’re poking around here so late at night like a little green burglar?”

Flayn draws herself up to her full height, which really is not saying much. “I-I have been hearing rumors that there are books my brother refuses to let me read, and the further continuation of my studies is of terrible importance! I will not let even my brother get in the way of education. After all, if I am to be on par with the other mages in the academy, I should make the effort to learn just as much.”

That’s probably the most amount of words Flayn’s ever spoken to him. “There is nothing I respect more than that dogged pursuit for knowledge, but I fear you’re looking in the wrong place,” Linhardt says, casting the Abyss entrance a skeptical look. As far as he knows, the easiest way to get it open involves a bit of dark magic, and the other, normal, method is composed of some complicated patterns Linhardt hadn’t bothered to learn about. It’s no wonder Flayn, faith magic incarnate, hasn’t been able to open it… yet. “Surely there are still books you’ve yet to read in the monastery library. There’s no need to go around looking for… I have no idea what you’re looking for.”

“Hmm…” Flayn crosses her arms. “Then what are you doing here, Linhardt?”

Ah. He probably should have expected this. “I heard a noise and came looking,” Linhardt says, blandly. Flayn opens her mouth, clearly eager to question him further, but Linhardt continues before she can interrupt him. “I was on my way to the library, in fact. Would you like me to accompany you? I’m sure the monastery is quite unsettling at night.”

“It is not that I am frightened of the dark,” Flayn huffs, but she’s already hurrying to Linhardt’s side. “But you _are_ already here, so I suppose I’ll take you up on that kind offer then! Thank you very much.”

Linhardt smiles. “It’s nothing.” He’s speculated quite a bit about Seteth and Flayn’s true identities, but amidst the rest of his studies, all he’s really been able to understand is that they’re related to Saints Cichol and Cethleann, respectively, if their Major Crests are anything to go by. If that’s so, he and Flayn must be related somehow as well, since Crests are passed down through blood.

He casts the cloaking spell over them once more, glad for the opportunity to test out how it works on more than just himself—it works fine, though he doubts it will hold for long, and he lets his mind wander as they walk in the direction of the library. Linhardt remembers, still, that burning hatred in his chest when he had seen the Crest of Cethleann manifest above him, healing his wounds and preparing him for another round of experiments. He scoffs internally—if he ever meets Saint Cethleann herself, he’s fairly sure he’d have quite the choice words for her.

Beside him, Flayn suddenly sneezes. “Excuse me. There must be pollen in the air—”

“Flayn, you bear the Major Crest of Cethleann, don’t you?”

Flayn nearly chokes in the middle of speaking. “I-I’m sorry?”

Linhardt blinks down at her. “Am I wrong?” Of course he’s right. He’s never wrong about someone’s Crest. “I was thinking it curious that we share a Crest, albeit mine is the Minor Crest. So we must be related to Saint Cethleann somehow, and by extension we are related through her as well. Since you’ve lived in the monastery for most of your life, surely you must know quite a bit of our shared ancestor, yes? I’ve always been interested in learning more about her.”

For some reason, Flayn’s cheeks go a dainty pink. “O-Oh? Is that what this is about? Well, yes, I suppose I do know quite a bit about… her. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know? For example… perhaps about her many good deeds!”

Linhardt frowns. “No, I was thinking more about the mechanics of her Crest. I appreciate the extra healing it provides when I perform faith magic, but otherwise it’s… a pain.”

Flayn’s face falls. “A pain!”

“Well, yes. It’s far more trouble than it’s worth.” Linhardt sighs, staring up at the night sky. They’re almost to the library now, and since any patrolling faculty go easy on students as long as they aren’t out of the monastery, Linhardt does away with the spell. “Some unsavory people seem to be out for me because of it.”

“Unsavory people… oh!” Flayn’s eyes widen, and she presses closer to Linhardt’s side in what looks like sudden interest. “Do you mean they wish to m-marry you because of your Crest? To pass it on in the bloodline? I have heard such a great amount of stories like that! I never imagined it would be the same with my—err, our Crest!”

Linhardt scratches his cheek. “Not quite what I was getting at, but… I suppose that’s true as well.” Father had started pestering him about finding the perfect wife around under a year ago after his sixteenth birthday, when the daughter of a small noble family lent him her favorite book, and Father had given Linhardt such a scrutinizing gaze that Linhardt finished the book on that same night so he could return it as fast as possible like the noble was a particularly strict librarian.

Unfortunately, Father had misinterpreted his actions. “Are you interested in her?” he pressed. “It is indeed about time you begin searching for someone to call wife. Passing down our Crest is of utmost importance.”

Linhardt distinctly remembers making a face. “No, I am not _interested_ in her.” The book was interesting, but he could find better in the local library.

“Nevertheless, you have certainly begun a decent relationship with her. You may as well take it further and—”

“I said _no,_ Father,” Linhardt snapped, now thoroughly disgusted. “The girl is _eleven._ ”

Looking at Flayn now, Linhardt can’t help but wonder if Father would push him to do something similar. The very thought makes him ill. Flayn almost looks like she could pass as Seteth’s daughter rather than younger sister, judging by her appearance and personality… wait. He mulls that over a little bit. Seteth’s daughter? Seteth has the Major Crest of Saint Cichol, who was Cethleann’s… father…

“Flayn.” He turns on her, stopping them in their tracks. The stairs to the second floor are just in front of them now, which is well and good—he’d rather not have any conversations where that Tomas can hear them. “Are you perhaps…”

Flayn looks up at him, politely curious. “Is something the matter?”

Linhardt has studied Saint Cethleann all his life—Father placed great importance on learning more about her than the other Saints, largely because of their heritage and to pay respects to the benefactor of their family Crest. Yet now that he thinks about it, Cethleann never married nor had children, so how could both Linhardt and Flayn have her Crest? How could Flayn have her _Major_ Crest, for that matter? No, there can only be one possibility. “Are you perhaps—”

_Thump._

Flayn jolts. “Ah—I’m sorry. Were you saying something, Linhardt?”

Linhardt feels his frown deepen. “Yes, but… that sounded worrying.” He’s grown used to the faint sounds of the patrol’s footsteps, and most of them involve the clanking of armor more than anything. They certainly don’t walk around that noisily—in fact, the noise had sounded far heavier than one foot coming down on the grass. “Hold on. It isn’t safe here.”

“It isn’t?” Flayn whispers. She sticks close to Linhardt again, one hand holding on to the back of his shirt and the other readying a ball of light magic. “Shall we head back to our dorms, then? Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to head outside after dark after all…”

Making sure Flayn isn’t paying too much attention to him, Linhardt takes a deep breath of air—and he winces so hard he nearly stumbles back. This stench—there is no mistaking it. He would know this smell anywhere. He had lived with it for seven days, day and night, stuck in that cold dark dungeon with only the all-encompassing stink of _him_ to keep as company. “Go,” Linhardt murmurs, pushing Flayn back. “To your room, or to anyone’s dorms—go.”

He can see Flayn’s eyes widening in his peripheral. “What? Linhardt, wait—”

“ _Go._ ” If they had targeted Linhardt because of his Minor Crest, what would they do to someone with a _Major_ Crest of Cethleann? Its self-healing properties would naturally be faster and more effective too, and Linhardt has overheard far too many conversations with Seteth about Flayn’s fragile constitution to count. If _those_ people find out about her—

Flayn hesitates still, but Linhardt has no time to push her again: the shadows at the end of the corridor are moving, too dark to make out clearly but moving all the same. He can feel that old fear creeping up his spine, sealing his legs in place—the stink of miasma is only coming closer, growing stronger, and his hands are shaking so hard mire is beginning to drip out from beneath his nails. _Calm down,_ he tries to tell himself, but the magic is vibrating right along with him, as if responding to some kindred soul.

Something glints in the darkness—the gleam of a blade, and twin red eyes. Then nothing.

“…hardt… Linhardt!”

His vision comes back to him in bursts and starts—he blinks once, twice, and the hazy green blur above him slowly sharpens into Flayn’s familiar face. “Oh, thank goodness,” she sighs, helping him sit up and lean against a wall. “Are you alright? You look like you were hurt much more than me…”

“I’m…” Linhardt flinches. His head is _pounding,_ and when he gingerly feels behind himself and his fingers brush against a sizeable bump, the pain almost pushes him back to unconsciousness. There is no way he is going to be able to focus enough to cast any sort of spell like this. “Not fine. But I’ll manage. What happened? Where are we?”

Flayn worries on her bottom lip. “It appears we are in some sort of… of subterranean world! I’ve never seen anywhere like this! We might be out of Garreg Mach altogether—”

“Subterranean world?” Linhardt looks around, trying to ignore his throbbing headache. They’re in some sort of dungeon, that much he can tell, though the room is small and with only a single metal door serving as both entrance and exit. The floor and walls are cracked and dirtied, and there are a few recognizable instruments lying around: rusted handcuffs, spiked maces, burnt torches. It looks like the stone walls were once gray, but everything is tinged with a telling shade of dark red.

“We’re still in Garreg Mach,” Linhardt surmises. “Just underground.”

Flayn stares. “Under… ground?”

“That is what I said, yes. It seems the most likely explanation.”

“Oh. W-Well, that’s what I said. _Subterranean_ means the same thing—but how are you so sure we’re still in the monastery? This architecture looks like it was from… from before my time!”

Easy: because it’s got all the same architectural nuances as Abyss. But Linhardt can’t exactly say that, so he goes with, “It’s a hunch. My hunches are never wrong. Now,” he continues, before Flayn can begin interrogating him further, “what exactly happened? I barely remember anything before I was out like a light.”

Flayn sighs and shakes her head. “I’m afraid I’ve no clue about our situation either. I’ve tried calling for help, despite the risk of being overheard by our captor, but no one entered or even told me to hush… is it possible we’re completely alone in here?” Her shoulders shake. “Are we trapped down here for eternity, Linhardt…?”

“You read too many storybooks. We aren’t alone.” Probably. Linhardt’s certain this is part of Abyss somehow, but he has no idea _where_ in Abyss it is. He’s wandered through the underground city several times by now, and he’s never passed by a dungeon like this. If only he had asked Hapi if she knew of a long-distance communication spell—something like that would certainly come in handy now, considering how close he must be from her or the other Abyssians, like Yuri. “Have you tried the door?”

Flayn huffs. “Of course I have! It won’t budge, no matter how hard I push or pull, and magic doesn’t seem to work either. The lock looks quite old, too. I doubt even the most skilled lockpick could get it open—”

_Click._

Flayn’s jaw drops.

The door swings open. “Oh, so it was you,” Yuri says, poking his head in and looking extremely unsurprised when he meets Linhardt’s eyes. “You do know this place is an absolute chore to navigate, don’t you? And who’s this young lady? Don’t tell me you brought her here to…”

“Hello, Yuri. No, I did not do that. I have no such tastes in women,” Linhardt answers, giving Flayn a pointed look. Flayn looks like she’s now torn between remaining shocked at Yuri’s appearance and offended at Linhardt’s comment. “We were kidnapped and brought here by… someone. I have no idea who. Be a saint and help us out, since you’re already here.”

Yuri’s eye twitches. “You could stand to be a little more _nice_ about it. Now I’m tempted to just leave you here.”

“Wait, no! I apologize for my companion’s rudeness, good sir!” Flayn cries, hurrying forward and waving her short arms around. Yuri blinks and looks down at her, raising an eyebrow. “Please, I beg of you to help us! We were indeed kidnapped by a mysterious captor and I fear they may return to hurt us at any moment. If you could only show us the fastest route out of here, we will be forever in your debt!”

“‘We?’” Linhardt mutters.

Yuri shoots him a look, but quickly turns back to Flayn. “Eh, well, since you’re asking so kindly, I suppose I’ve no choice now. I’m not one to turn my back on someone in need. But…” He glances around, eyes narrowing. “I hear footsteps, and these aren’t ones I recognize. We’ll have to be quick about it, and smart, too. Stay close, follow everything I say, and don’t wander off on your own.”

Flayn bows at a perfect 90-degree angle. “Thank you so very kindly! Ah, I almost forgot to introduce myself, beg pardon for my lacking etiquette—I am Flayn! I am honored to meet you…?”

“It’s Yuri.” Yuri looks baffled, but not displeased, at Flayn’s probably over-the-top speech. Linhardt wonders if that’s what he sounds like whenever he goes on his apparently infamous tangents. “Linhardt, you coming?”

“Oh, of course. I’d never pass on the opportunity to spend quality time with the renowned Yuri,” Linhardt murmurs, making his way across the room to join Flayn’s side. At Yuri’s scowl, Linhardt gives him a smile and shakes his head. “I jest. Thank you. You see, I can be polite when I want to. But where exactly are we? This place is completely unfamiliar to me.”

Yuri leads them out of the room first, shutting and locking the door behind him, before he starts walking down the narrow corridors. “If I remember right, this place used to be a prison for war criminals and the like,” he says. He never once stops moving and looking around, and Linhardt can’t help but admire this level of alertness; if he were more like Yuri right now, he’s sure he’d never sleep in class again. “Most of the rooms here have handcuffs and chains and all the good stuff you can use to keep a victim in place. Interrogation, torture, you name it. I’ve only been down here a handful of times, though, and mostly just for pest control.”

“Pest control? You’re in charge of that?”

“‘Course I am. Can’t just let your run-of-the-mill bandit run amok and steal everything of value. Not that there’s much here after we cleaned the place, but it’s just to be safe.”

“Ah, bandits. Of course.” Linhardt had been thinking more along the lines of roaches and rats.

Flayn looks back and forth between them. “May I ask how you two know each other? For that matter, where did you come from, Yuri? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you at the monastery before.”

Yuri gives Linhardt a look that clearly tells him to do the talking, and Linhardt suppresses a tired sigh. Oh, well—it isn’t entirely his fault the secret is out, anyway. “You know how you were talking about restricted books earlier, Flayn?”

“Yes? I don’t see what that has to do with the situation, though. Oh, don’t tell me there’s a secret underground society below Garreg Mach!” She giggles behind her hand. “Now _you’re_ the one reading too many storybooks, Linhardt.”

Linhardt holds his head in his hands for a few seconds before speaking again. “You’re completely right. The underground society is called Abyss, and Yuri is one of its primary leaders.”

“You flatter me,” Yuri says, though his voice is completely devoid of emotion. “We only know each other because Linhardt went down here once and refused to stop coming back since. He’s been quite the thorn in my side.”

Flayn goes on giggling. “So you two are good friends! I see the similarities—”

She pauses. “Wait. I’m sorry. Did you say—underground society?”

Linhardt wonders how much more he should tell her before Yuri halts in his tracks, throwing his arm out to keep them from going further. “Stop. They’re coming closer—they’re just around the corner. Stay hidden and I’ll take care of them.”

“Who is ‘they?’” Linhardt whispers. He can’t hear a thing, and judging by how Flayn has a look of immense concentration on her face, it doesn’t look like she does either.

Yuri doesn’t bother with an answer. He creeps along the wall, one hand resting atop the sword at his waist, and then suddenly he’s gone—Linhardt starts forward, but his headache intensifies so painfully he stumbles on a crack on the floor and has to lean on Flayn for support. Then he blinks, and Yuri is… back, sword still in its sheath but two bodies lying on the ground behind him, bleeding from their necks. “What’s with you?” Yuri asks, arms folded over his chest and a smug little smirk curling on his lips. “Were you worried for me? That’s so sweet. Consider me touched to tears.”

“You…” Linhardt steadies himself along the wall, gently pushing Flayn away. Ugh, his head hurts so much it feels ready to just roll right off his neck. His hair had been matted with blood earlier, so he can only assume Flayn had cast a rudimentary Heal spell to stop the bleeding but not to fix anything else. “I was simply alarmed. Idiot.”

Yuri rolls his eyes and raises a hand. Linhardt readies himself to back away, but Yuri only says, “Is that your best excuse? Idiot,” and taps Linhardt’s forehead with two fingers. The white light and gentle warmth of what is undeniably a Heal spell flows from his hand, easing the pain in Linhardt’s head near-instantly. “There. Now if I’m _actually_ in danger, you won’t be tripping over yourself to help me.”

“Huh.” Linhardt blinks, turning his head this way and that. There’s a twinge of pain at first, but nothing more afterwards. Fascinating—even the bump on the back of his head has decreased in size, and will probably be gone by tomorrow morning. “I never knew you could cast faith magic,” he says, grudging respect leaking into his voice.

Flayn looks between them again, her eyes now shining for what seems like a completely different reason than earlier. “My… the comradeship!” she exclaims, more to herself than anything. “It truly is different between two men!”

Linhardt stares at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Ah, d-did I say that out loud? Please excuse me! I was only talking to myself!”

Yuri looks at her, then at Linhardt, then to the wall in front of him, and sighs. “I have no such interest in men like you. Shall we move on?”

They come across more of what look like strangely-dressed soldiers whom Linhardt is sure aren’t affiliated with the church—their clothes are ragged, their weapons rusty, and many of their faces are deformed under the masks they wear. Linhardt jolts back when he first sees it—deformations like these, wrinkled stark-white skin, black in place of white for their eyes… there’s no doubt these people are (or were, once Yuri’s through with them) involved in dark magic, particularly the self-destructive kind. Could they, and by extension whoever had brought Linhardt and Flayn down here, be in league with Solon…?

Yuri nudges the twitching body of the latest felled soldier. “You wanna bring one back for questioning?” he asks, clearly having noticed Linhardt’s interest. “This one’s still alive, though barely. We can kick him in one of these rooms and keep him there ‘til we can come back down when it’s not too dangerous.”

Flayn frowns. “That’s a little… cruel, isn’t it?”

“And he might cry for help,” Linhardt adds.

“Oh, don’t you two worry,” Yuri says, grinning wickedly. The expression suits him even more than his earlier smirk. “I’m not Abyss leader for nothing. Besides, you really think it’ll take us that long to get out of this place?”

Linhardt watches with a sort of stupefied awe as Yuri trusses the soldier up with some rope Yuri happened to be conveniently carrying around in his pockets, then tosses the man into the next locked chamber they come across. Then he places two fingers atop the man’s mouth, careful not to get himself bitten, and murmurs something under his breath—the man opens his mouth, probably to cuss all three of them out, but only a dry croak leaves his lips.

“The Silence spell,” Flayn breathes, sounding astounded. “Yuri, you’re amazing! Not just anyone can learn magic requiring that much focus and control! Can you really keep it up for as long as we need?”

Yuri grins, though this one is more victorious. “‘Course, this is nothing. And I’ve had to learn my fair share of spells to get on by. So? Let’s get going.”

Linhardt looks down at his hands. _Hmph._ He could probably learn the Silence spell if he wanted to. Never mind that he’s failed at actually succeeding at it dozens of times by now. Surely that’s just because Caspar is loud enough to break through even Yuri’s magic.

It feels like forever until they finally reach the path to the part of Abyss Linhardt is familiar with. No wonder he hadn’t found it earlier, though: it’s in one of the many small rooms, and hidden behind a large boulder that blends perfectly well with its surroundings. “I’ve never heard of this place being connected to the surface, so I might stick around and look for it just in case,” Yuri mumbles. “You two can go on ahead. Linhardt, you know your way around in there, so you can get back without getting lost.”

Linhardt nods, but Flayn looks worried. “What if our captor is still around here? Yuri, we can’t risk you getting injured. I shall go alert my brother instead! He’s the strongest fighter I know, and then we can all work together to look for the scoundrel.”

Yuri grimaces. “Working together with a surface-dweller? Helping you guys out is one thing, but that’s another. No, thanks. We’ve drawn a very strict line between our two people, and I’d rather neither of us overstep it more than we already have. Just go on ahead already, will you? You can always come back when you’re ready for that interrogation with our little friend.”

“I’m not getting the best feeling from this.” Linhardt steps forward. “At least let me help. Whoever these people are might be connected to something that happened in my past. This battle concerns me alone.”

Yuri’s eyebrows threaten to disappear beneath his hairline. “Whoa, whoa, and here I thought you were the bookish type, not someone to so enthusiastically volunteer for some bloodshed. Let me think… yeah, answer’s still no. Can you two get on with your lives already and leave me in peace?”

“There’s no getting through to you, is there…” Linhardt sighs. “Fine. Flayn, let’s go.”

“What? But—”

“Let’s go, alright? I’ll lead the rest of the way.”

Linhardt waits until they’re around halfway through the tunnel, when he can already see the rest of Abyss up ahead, before turning back around to look over his shoulder. As he’d expected, Yuri’s already moved the boulder back to hide the passageway. “Be quick and follow me,” he says, bringing Flayn out of her sulking. “We can’t leave Yuri to fight some unknown enemy on his own. I’d rather not bring your brother into this, but Byleth might be willing to help.”

Flayn’s eyes widen. “Yes! Linhardt, I knew you weren’t about to leave Yuri of all people alone back there!”

“…of all people?”

“But by Byleth, do you mean your new professor? How come—” She claps her hands to her mouth. “Oh! Don’t tell me… you two…!”

Linhardt is beyond bewildered by this girl. “I would appreciate it if you could speak more clearly. In any case, there’s no time to lose—we have to move fast. Can you keep up?”

Flayn grins. Linhardt is struck by the terrible realization that she now looks remarkably similar to Yuri. “What do you take me for? I am a strong fighter in my own right, too, Linhardt! Can _you_ keep up?”

It turns out they keep up with each other remarkably well, because they both get exhausted not five minutes in their running. Linhardt forges on anyway—by now the citizens of Abyss hardly even blink in his direction, and while Flayn had been enamored by her surroundings when they first emerged into the underground city, all she can look now is the ground. Somehow they manage to reach Linhardt’s usual passageway, and he waves his hand carelessly to open the wall up.

Flayn gasps. “You… You lied to me! This _was_ an entrance to the underground city after all! Who do you think you are to keep such information from me!”

“Oh, quiet down,” Linhardt groans. When they step out into the surface, the sun is already high up in the sky—how long had they been down there? He doesn’t feel hungry, but Linhardt tends to not realize he hasn’t eaten when he gets wrapped up in endeavors, and Yuri had thankfully brought along a water bottle for them to take greedy sips from earlier. “Flayn, do you know how much time we spent in the dungeon?”

Flayn frowns. “I… I’m not sure… There was no way of telling time down there, and I woke you up soon after I did. Oh, we should have asked Yuri about the date!”

“It doesn’t matter now. Let’s just go.” Where would Byleth be at this hour? “The dorms aren’t too far from here. Shall we check Byleth’s room first?”

“Why do you not call him by his title?” Flayn asks, though it takes her much longer to actually get the question out in between heavy panting and gasping as they continue running.

Linhardt can’t shrug like this, but he does his best. “We met before. It’s difficult to see him as a professor.”

“O-Oh, I see… a shared history…”

When they reach Byleth’s room, Linhardt nearly kicks the door down in his impatience; as it is, he settles for throwing it open, only to find Byleth seemingly conversing with thin air. “Byleth!” he shouts, startling the man into nearly falling off his bed. “We have an emergency. Please come with us right now.”

Byleth’s eyes widen—this might be the most emotion Linhardt’s seen him display before. “Linhardt? Flayn? What—Where have you been? It’s been days—”

“ _Days?_ ” Flayn cries. “Oh, goodness, if Yuri hadn’t found us…”

“That’s not important right now,” Linhardt insists. “Please come with us. We need your help. I can explain the rest on the way.”

It feels like it takes an unbelievable amount of time before they return to the Abyss entrance, descend into the underground, and retrace their steps back to the dungeon passageway all over again. Linhardt makes to use magic to push the boulder, but Byleth doesn’t even pause in his movements before stepping up and shoving it out of the way. Linhardt blinks, for once at a loss for words—Byleth’s been doing more teaching than fighting nowadays that Linhardt forgets his muscles aren’t for show. “So this Yuri is here somewhere, then? Where—”

He moves faster than Linhardt can follow—one second Byleth is looking around, and the next he’s drawn his sword just in time to parry a huge, curved blade. Linhardt’s first thought is a sickle, the farming tool he’s seen once or twice in shops in Enbarr; then he sees that the blade is black, and also much larger than a sickle has any right to be. A scythe, he realizes—the same scythe the moonlight had shone upon the night they had been captured.

“This strength…”

Behind Linhardt, Flayn takes a shaking step back, her eyes wide and one hand covering her mouth. And Linhardt can’t blame her, because a shudder had raced down his spine at the voice, too—deep, dark, draining the already-dim passageway of any remaining light. Linhardt follows the blade of the scythe to its handle, and then to the man wielding it—dressed in all-black armor, with a large, elaborate mask adorned with twin curving horns. Whoever he is, he towers over Byleth, and his scythe is beginning to push even the Creator Sword back through sheer, overwhelming strength.

Byleth grits his teeth, heels digging against the ground. “W-Who are you? Were you the one who kidnapped my students?”

“So it’s you,” the man murmurs. He backs away suddenly, lowering his scythe, and Byleth gasps as he leans against the nearby wall for balance. “Yes. It was me. Are you angered? Would you like a duel to the death? I have dreamed of meeting one such as you for as long as I can remember.”

Now Byleth looks confused. Linhardt feels much the same; the conversation had taken a ridiculously sharp turn within two sentences. “I… I’m sorry?”

“If you wish for those two behind you to leave this place alive, then kill me.” The man hunches down, scythe at the ready. “Otherwise there will be nothing stopping me from returning them to the dungeon and finishing the job.”

Byleth pales and glances behind him, meeting Linhardt’s eyes for a brief moment. “Don’t,” Linhardt says, before Byleth can tell them to run or escape. “Byleth, don’t. Just—Just hold on.” He can use the Warp spell, he knows he can, he just needs a bit of time—a bit of focus—he just needs to stop himself from shaking uncontrollably because if he fails, if he can’t get them out of here in time, then that man, that scythe—and what will become of him, of Flayn? Will they be taken back to the dark mages, to Solon, and will they have to go through the experiments again, only several times worse than before? What if they get Byleth instead, subject him to experiments to see how much his mysterious Crest can achieve—

“Silence, fool,” the man growls, and then—and then.

Linhardt does not register the pain until he hits the cold stone floor beneath him—and when he presses a hand to his chest he realizes, belatedly, that he’s bleeding. _Oh, I’m bleeding,_ he thinks, _oh, there’s blood, my blood—_ and then he’s shaking, trembling, because it’s so dark, so cold, walls everywhere all around him and it’s his blood on his hands, again, his blood pooling beneath him and a man dressed in black standing over him, long blade dripping with red and, and, it hurts, _it hurts—_

“It hurts,” he whispers, “it hurts, I—I—don’t—don’t hurt him—”

“Linhardt!” someone’s crying, and why—why is their voice so familiar? Linhardt thinks he might have met them in another life, sometime in the distant past or the distant future, green eyes and green hair and blinding white light before him. “Linhardt, stay with me—you are fine, you are alright—”

“Don’t hurt him,” Linhardt gasps, and he closes his eyes because he can’t stand it, can’t stand the sight of that Crest, of its curving lines and curling heart, so deceptively kind, he wants to reach out and crush it in his fist, this Crest, _this Crest,_ what has it ever _done for him—_ “Not him, not him—”

“Byleth is fine,” Flayn says, but Linhardt can care less about anyone else right now, no, he has to know, is Caspar alright, as long as he’s fine, as long as it’s him, he’ll endure the pain as long as he needs, just not him, not him—“He’s fine, Linhardt, stay still, _please,_ let me help you!”

He’s not sure if he says anything else, because the warmth that started in his chest reaches his throat, and then his face, and then… Linhardt inhales, exhales, stares at the ceiling, stares at the Crest of Cethleann above him. For some reason all he can think about are those days he spent sitting in Father’s clinic in Enbarr, watching that Crest manifest above the bodies of patients Father healed and fixed up all afternoon. “This Crest is yours, too,” Father had told him, when he caught Linhardt looking, “and it is your duty to pass it on to the next generation.”

After his hair turned white, Linhardt felt sick just thinking of passing down the burden in his blood to a child who had never asked for it, never wanted it, never desired for anything other than books and sleep and a best friend he had bled on that stone floor for.

“Linhardt?” Flayn whispers. “Linhardt, answer me, we have to—”

The warm, gentle glow from the Crest of Cethleann has long faded. Linhardt sits up and replaces it with the blazing light of a different Crest.

Shrieks fill the passageway the moment the shadows burst forth from his palm—Linhardt hadn’t even bothered thinking of a specific spell to use, and he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised the banshee had taken that as its cue to finally come back to life after four years of disuse. It hits the black-armored man straight against his chest, knocking him back a few feet away from Byleth, who whirls around to stare at Linhardt in obvious shock. Linhardt cannot care less—he stands up, ignoring his knocking knees and spotty vision, and calls on that magic again, lets it fill him up until he can see that snake within him again, back after a long, long period of rest. It uncoils from its sleep, tongue flicking out to taste blood in the air.

 _Yes, good morning,_ Linhardt tells it. _Here’s something for you to eat._

The banshee had disappeared as soon as it crashed against the armored man, but the magic that pours out of Linhardt’s palms does not—it grows and grows, long and black and serpentine until it’s blocked the entire width of the corridor, separating the three of them from the man inside the dungeon. “Interesting,” Linhardt hears, muffled as the voice is. “This magic… it can only belong to one of you.”

The man had said nothing specific, but Linhardt knows just who exactly he is referring to, and the very thought of being affiliated with those people makes him sick. “I am nothing like them,” he snarls, and the snake hisses right along with him. Flayn is standing behind him while Byleth is beside him, the Creator Sword still held up in preparation for an attack. “If you value your life, you will leave us well alone.”

“Bold words for conjuring nothing but a fancy illusion.” A _swish,_ and the scythe has cut through the snake, dispersing clouds of miasma and poison dust. Linhardt scowls. “Come out and fight if you so wish to die, foolish child.”

Byleth says, softly, “Linhardt—”

“No!” Linhardt growls. “He is one of them. _He_ is one of the people who made me this way. How better to thank them than by showing them what they have done to me!”

He waves his arm, and the snake swoops down—it bares its great fangs and sinks them deep into the man’s shoulder, piercing straight through armor, flesh, and bone. Despite the snake obscuring most of the place from view, Linhardt can see everything clear as day—the man stumbles back with a grunt, steadying himself on his scythe at the first throb of poison in his veins. How strong is the poison? How long will it last? Will it eat through his body until it rots into nothing, or will it fade in time? For once Linhardt cares nothing for the specifics, only the here and now; the snake rises back into the air, its head brushing the dungeon ceiling, and then dives back down for the kill this time—

“Stop!” an unfamiliar voice shouts—Linhardt falters at the last second, and so does the serpent. “What is going on here? You! I gave you _one_ job! What’s happened to you?”

“Let go of me.” The man’s voice is unmistakable now. “I have business with this illusionist, and afterwards, the swordsman I’ve longed to die by the blade of…”

“…I have no idea what you are saying, but we need to leave,” the stranger demands. “Let us be off at once.”

Linhardt grinds his teeth. “Cowards!” he shouts; the snake twists in the air, coiling around the man and the new, armored stranger who seems to have warped in the dungeon. “Stay where you are. Who is your leader? Where is Solon!?”

But they’re already gone when he blinks again, leaving only a trace of Warp magic behind. Silence fills the empty space almost as well as the snake hovering, waiting for its next order.

A hand, warm upon his shoulder; Linhardt turns to meet Byleth’s worried eyes. “Linhardt,” he says again, even softer and more uncertain than earlier. “They’re gone. It’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Linhardt hisses. “It’s never over. For as long as I remain like _this—_ ” He gestures at the serpent, and it twists once more before dissipating into purple smoke. “For as long as I cannot rip the answers I need out of their throats, for as long as I cannot ensure his safety from them—it will never be over.” He inhales, exhales, doesn’t even care that more miasma than oxygen drifts into his lungs. His body knows what to do with the poison by now. “Not him,” he whispers. “Anyone but him.”

He looks up, but he already knows the dungeon is empty. Byleth says nothing, and Flayn moves to clasp one of his hands in both of her own. “Linhardt,” she murmurs, “we must search for Yuri. He may still be around here. Are you sure you are alright?”

Inhale. Exhale. The snake is back inside him, whether in his chest or stomach or throat he cannot tell, only that it is lying in wait for the next time Linhardt decides to bring it back out. What had the man called him? An illusionist. A fake, a pretender, some fancy magician whose magic will never be real. Is that all he really is to them? A runaway experiment playing at being a dark mage?

Inhale. Exhale.

“I’m fine.” Linhardt meets Byleth’s eyes, then Flayn’s. “My apologies. I don’t know… what came over me.”

It’s a lie, and not even a good one, but neither of them question it. Byleth walks forward into the dungeon, sword at the ready, while Flayn keeps hold of Linhardt as they follow behind him. The magic swirls around Linhardt’s head, whispering in his ear: _Impressive. That was unlike anything I’ve seen from you before. Now you understand your true potential._

Linhardt shakes his head, just minute enough for Flayn not to notice. _Don’t make me laugh. You heard what the man called me: illusionist. Pretender. Liar._

_And so? It worked all the same. You drove them away. Is that not good enough?_

He drove them away? Please. _That snake… is it a spell? What kind?_

 _Oh, but don’t you already know?_ The magic almost sounds amused. _You must not have been paying much attention when you were reading. That was Jormungand—the world serpent._

They find Yuri curled up in a corner of one of the smaller rooms, tending to the cuts and scratches scattered throughout his body with some haphazard first-aid materials he scavenged like a wounded animal. Flayn heals him up, insisting on repaying her debt, while Linhardt observes his injuries from a distance—most of them are shallow, not at all deep, and Linhardt theorizes Yuri’s natural speed and dexterity helped him avoid getting any limbs cut clean off by that scythe. Byleth and Yuri exchange introductions, and Yuri grudgingly explains the existence of Abyss to another stranger as they make their way back to the city.

Linhardt can only bring himself to stare down at his hands. His veins pulse black, darker than he’s ever seen them before, and it doesn’t look like these will go away and be fine come tomorrow morning. The darkness stands out on his already-pale skin, stark black on white, and he knows without a doubt Caspar would notice something like this a mile away.

 _World serpent._ It sounds like a joke.

Back at the monastery, Flayn is safely returned to Seteth, who bows and thanks them profusely with hardly any pause between his words. Byleth reports their findings—the mysterious masked man who apparently lines up with some descriptions of some knight in a rumor, and the underground dungeon he had taken them to, but he leaves out the part about it being connected to Abyss, though Linhardt’s sure Seteth’s aware of its existence.

“Let me walk you back to the dorms,” Byleth says, after Seteth and Flayn have returned to their own rooms. “I have… a lot to discuss with you.”

Linhardt sighs. “I’m not in the mood, thank you.”

“Then allow me just one question. Were the people involved in what happened four years ago down there, with the strange knight?”

“I…” Linhardt shrugs listlessly. He’s not sure if the spell earlier had taken much more than he expected out of him, but right now all he wants to do is lock himself in his room, lie in bed, and stare up at the ceiling forever. “I can’t say. But I recognized the… smell. The knight wasn’t involved four years ago, but he’s affiliated with them, that I can say for sure.”

Byleth nods, clearly filing the information away in his head. “Thank you. Get some rest, Linhardt.” Then, softer, “If you need anything, my room isn’t far.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Unfortunately, Linhardt has to give up on getting any rest when he spots someone waiting in front of his dorm room. “Caspar. What are you—”

“ _Lin!_ ” And, predictably enough, Caspar barrels towards him and engulfs him in a rib-crushing hug.

Linhardt briefly contemplates pushing him off, but there’s something comforting about Caspar’s closeness despite the pain that he lets Caspar cling to him instead. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, glancing around—no one else is nearby, thankfully enough. “Did I worry you?”

“Did you _worry me?_ ” Caspar repeats, sounding like he can barely believe his ears. “Lin, you and Flayn were gone for _days!_ We combed every inch of the place and we still couldn’t find you guys, I thought something happened, I-I thought—” He stammers, falters, draws back from Linhardt just to pull him close again and bury his face in his chest. “I thought… like last time, you…”

“Oh.” Linhardt lifts his arms, unsure where to put them, then wraps them around Caspar’s shoulders. They’d hugged last time, too, only it had been in Caspar’s room, when they were still too young to care about propriety and they were still small enough to fit in one bed. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again, more genuinely this time. “I didn’t mean to… well, get kidnapped. Again. Shall we go inside?”

Caspar sniffs tellingly, but lets go and follows Linhardt into his room. There’s a thin layer of dust over everything, to Linhardt’s disdain, but he supposes he’ll just have to ask the monastery staff for help cleaning the place up later on. “You got kidnapped? _Again?_ ” Caspar asks as soon as he closes the door behind him. “What happened this time? You—You’re not hurt, are you?”

Linhardt looks down at his uniform. The black fabric ensures the blood from his chest wound earlier isn’t very obvious, and Flayn’s Heal spell, combined with the additional power from her Crest, had helped clean the blood up a bit too. “No, I’m fine, just tired.”

He explains what happened as succinctly as possible, leaving out the part with his dark magic—judging by how Caspar eyes his hands, though, it looks like he already knows, or at least has an idea. Afterwards, the quiet descends on them, heavy in the air—Linhardt’s already curled up on the sheets, while Caspar is perched on the edge of the bed, staring at Linhardt’s face and looking deep in thought, an expression Linhardt doesn’t often see from him. “What is it? You look like you have something to say.”

“What? Oh, uh…” Caspar sighs, scratching his cheek. “Lin, don’t take this the wrong way, I… I’m really glad you’re safe and everything, but… is this related to what happened four years ago?”

Linhardt’s nails dig into the blankets. “What?”

“I just…” Caspar gestures at—of course—Linhardt’s hands. “I don’t know. Ever since we started training with your dark magic, it’s been kinda hard to stop thinking about… what could have happened back then.” He pauses, looking away. “Is it something I really can’t afford to know?”

“Yes,” Linhardt answers, without hesitation. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t let you know about it.”

Are the words too harsh? Caspar winces like he’s been struck, and immediately Linhardt feels terrible, but he can’t risk it—after everything he’d done, everything he’d been through, he can’t risk Caspar being in any more danger than he already is in. If worse comes to worst, if the dark mages find out about them again—if the dark mages find them again, here and now in the monastery—Linhardt doesn’t even want to think about it. He had escaped through sheer luck last time; there is no way of telling if he can do the same now.

“Really?” Caspar mumbles, turning around to meet Linhardt’s eyes. “So why does the professor get to know about it?”

Linhardt freezes. “What?”

“Professor Byleth. I know he knows.”

“He—No, he doesn’t know anything,” Linhardt says, sitting up to stare at Caspar. How did he find out? Linhardt’s sure no one else had been around when he had first told Byleth about it those months ago, and Byleth doesn’t seem like the type of person who would betray his trust and tell Caspar about something that isn’t his business. “I told you. He only helped me return to you and your father.”

Caspar jumps to his feet. “Don’t lie to me!”

His voice seems to bounce off the walls of the room, echoing over and over in Linhardt’s ears. Has Caspar ever shouted at him like this? Perhaps he’s shouted, a few times, to call Linhardt’s name from a distance, waving at him and urging him over to look at something cool. Or he’s shouted to warn Linhardt of danger when they’re on the battlefield and an enemy soldier light on their feet has snuck past the front lines to attack the healer.

But he’s never shouted like this: full of anger, full of _hurt._

“The two of you—you’re always talking,” Caspar says, voice wobbling as if unsure if it should sound furious or pained. “And you always wait for him after class once everyone else has left to mumble and mutter under your breaths—it’s obvious you told him! Maybe not four years ago, but definitely sometime during the school year! So why—” And here his voice cracks, and here Linhardt’s heart quivers, “why do you trust him more than me? Why won’t you let me help too?”

“Caspar.” Linhardt can’t tell which part of his body is shaking most. “It’s not that.”

“So what is it, then?” Caspar demands. This isn’t a sudden bout of irritation that can be fixed with an apology and an offering of food—this is months’ worth of pent-up frustration, watching and waiting and wondering why. His fists are clenched so tightly at his sides that for a brief, ridiculous moment Linhardt worries he’ll injure himself.

Linhardt inhales and exhales, but it doesn’t calm him down as much as he hoped it would, because all he can smell is the miasma that clings to him like a second shadow. “This knowledge—it’s dangerous, alright? The people from back then may still be looking for me now. If they know you know about them, they… they might…”

“Might what? Hurt me?”

“I— _yes,_ so why can’t you see—”

“So what about the professor? He knows! Is this your way of telling me I’m not strong enough to protect myself?”

“Caspar, you _weren’t there!_ ” Linhardt doesn’t even realize he’s standing until he has to look down at Caspar, but even then he can’t bring himself to meet his eyes. “Those people—they’re dark mages. Their magic is nothing like mine, or even Hubert’s or Lysithea’s. They—They—” _They told me they’d hurt you a hundred times worse than they did me, they told me they’d_ kill _you if I tried to escape, everyday I wake up fearing today may be the day I never see you again—_

“But if I don’t know anything, then how can I protect you!?” Caspar shouts back. It isn’t hatred on his face, only _concern_ and _worry_ written all over his expression, and Linhardt wishes it were hatred instead, because then at least he’d able to deal with it. “You only brought Professor Byleth down to the dungeon with you ‘cause you knew he’d be able to help. I—I want that, too! We’re best friends, Lin! If you’re in danger, I have to be able to help you, not run away so I can ask someone else to fight in my place!”

Linhardt grabs his arm. Caspar is infinitely stronger than him, but he doesn’t pull away, just lets Linhardt hold onto him and stares back up into his eyes with a defiant look in his own. “You don’t understand,” Linhardt whispers. “You have no idea what happened then.”

“So then _tell me,_ ” Caspar presses, placing his other hand atop Linhardt’s. “It doesn’t have to be the whole thing. Just what I need to know to be able to _help._ ”

His eyes are so earnest. Linhardt had thought of those eyes, over and over again, when he’d been chained in the basement of the house. He had thought of Caspar’s smile and voice and laugh, had cycled through all their memories together to keep himself sane, and in the end it was this that helped him escape. Thinking about it used to have him shaking and shivering under the blankets; now he looks at Caspar and all he can think about is how he might look if the dark mages ever find him again, if they might remember him, if they might remember what Linhardt had done last time and if they might prepare themselves for him now.

“I have two Crests.”

Caspar blinks. Confusion crosses his face for a moment, but then he only shrugs and nods, like this is nothing at all to him. “That’s… weird. How?”

“They performed… experiments on me. While I was there.” Lysithea had called it a _blood reconstruction surgery,_ and the term lines up with some of the books Linhardt has read down in the Shadow Library. “It’s how I’m able to cast dark magic now. And apparently, the blood transfusion had a severe impact on my lifespan. I’d be lucky to reach twenty.”

Caspar’s eyes go wide. _Good,_ some sick voice in Linhardt’s head whispers. _Let him feel shocked. Let him feel guilty._ “That—But that’s only in three years!”

“I know. Do you understand now? These people are beyond anything and anyone we know.” Linhardt lets his hand fall back down to his side, but it takes Caspar a moment longer to lower his own arms, like being held by Linhardt is the most natural thing for him by now. “The only reason I went with them was because the man there could have killed you with his magic. The only reason I stayed as long as I did and let them have their way with me was because they had someone tracking you at all times. The only reason I escaped at all was because I forced one of my captors to let go of you before I killed him and fled.”

“You—” Caspar falters, steps back. “You killed him?”

Linhardt’s eyes narrow. “Him and many more. They brought back men for me to practice my magic on—I tortured them to the brink of death through dark magic, then brought them back to health through faith magic. Only when the mages were satisfied with my progress did they let me kill those innocent men at last. Do you see, now? This is why I never wanted you to know about this, because it would only endanger you more than it would help you.”

Caspar scowls. “You’re wrong, Lin. I don’t think any different of you because of that! You’re still my best friend. You didn’t do that stuff because you wanted to!”

Linhardt steps forward, and he shouldn’t be surprised when Caspar backs away, uncertainty flickering in his eyes—he shouldn’t be surprised, he shouldn’t be, after everything he had just said, and yet it hurts all the same. “So why do you look afraid now?” he breathes, so soft he’s not sure Caspar even hears him.

“I—I’m not scared,” Caspar insists, but the stutter in his voice is all Linhardt needs to hear. “I just need to wrap my head around this more, okay? Lin, this doesn’t change anything—no, it does, but it only changes stuff for the better. I’m going to—train real hard, and try to find out more about these people, and then I’ll be able to _really_ help you. This stuff has to be reversible! I’ve never heard of anyone having a second Crest, so if they managed to do something like that, then surely—surely they can fix you—”

“ _No!_ ” Linhardt exclaims—no, did he shout? Has he ever shouted at Caspar like this before, too? He can’t remember, and even now he can’t quite believe it, because he could never get angry at Caspar, they had never fought before over anything more than some petty disagreement over tiny things, and now—“Why don’t you understand? This isn’t something you can help with, Caspar! It doesn’t matter how much you train, they’re not people you can so easily defeat, they’re—”

“Why don’t _you_ understand, Lin!? No one’s invincible, and I know that best! That’s why we just have to keep working hard so we can get stronger than them, and then—”

“Do you know something, Caspar?” He’s shaking. He can’t stop. There’s something dark and bitter crawling up his throat, dripping off his tongue when he speaks. “Sometimes I blame you.”

Caspar hesitates, looks up at him. He must already know, he has to understand, but perhaps he can’t accept it because all he manages is a shaky, “What?”

“Sometimes I blame you for everything that happened to me.” Linhardt stares at the floor, but all he sees is the snake from earlier, its body all smoke and mirrors but its poison more real than anything else about it. “If they hadn’t dangled your life before my eyes and threatened to torture you, I could have escaped sooner, perhaps even before my second Crest was successfully implanted. If the man hadn’t told me he would kill you if I tried calling your name, I could have run back to the estate. No—on that day, in the forest. If you hadn’t brought me there, I wouldn’t be this way at all.”

He closes his eyes, sees the serpent hiss and bare its fangs. For what? A bit of poison any self-respecting healer could cure in an instant, a bit of poison Father would have laughed in the face of? A strong gust of wind to blow the smoke away and there would only be one pathetic mage standing behind it, and he would fall at the slightest nick of an arrow. No, the serpent’s real value lies in its illusion of a threat.

“If it weren’t for you, I keep telling myself,” Linhardt whispers. “If it weren’t for you.”

Caspar leaves afterwards, obviously. Linhardt can’t imagine even he would have stayed after something like that.

When the door closes shut behind him, Linhardt stares at the wall for a moment, running his words through his head again like he can do anything about it. It seems unbelievable, even to him—each word had struggled to leave his lips, and each sentence had hurt as if he had been biting on his tongue after each period. Even now he can still taste it, that bitterness lingering in his mouth, thick as mire, and when he breathes in he can barely distinguish the smell of miasma from regular oxygen anymore.

He sits back down on his bed. Lies down. Curls up.

They’re lies, of course. Linhardt has never blamed anyone but the dark mages for what happened to him then, much less _Caspar._ But if he can’t stop Caspar from finding out about it and insisting on running headlong into danger, then what better way to stop him than to make him hate Linhardt instead?

Caspar hating him. _Ah…_ the very thought is enough to make him squeeze his eyes shut as if he can block out the concept. But it isn’t just a concept anymore, is it? He hates him, that Linhardt is certain of. If anything, Linhardt definitely hates _himself._

He stays there in bed for a long while. Evening falls. Caspar does not bring him dinner.

Linhardt does not sleep that night.

“Hey, Linny.” Hapi flops into the seat across him. Behind her, Yuri sighs and crosses his arms, leaning back against a pillar. “You’ve been down here a lot more often lately, huh?”

“Is that so? I hadn’t noticed.” Linhardt turns a page, just to look like he’s actually reading rather than just staring blankly at the letters. “Well, I have to thank you for always being so accommodating of me—”

“Speak for yourself,” Yuri scoffs.

“—but is there something you need?”

Hapi looks at him. “Is there something we need,” she repeats, blandly enough that it no longer sounds like a question.

“That’s what I asked.”

Finally, Yuri pushes himself off the pillar and slams his palm against the desk. “Look, having one of you surface-dwellers around was enough of a pain in the ass,” he grinds out, unable to even look Linhardt in the eye at this point, “but Hapi likes you, so I had no choice. And that time in the dungeon wasn’t your fault. But now you come around and bring a whole _shit ton_ of them!?”

Linhardt frowns. “Come now, are we really that numerous? It’s just a handful.”

Hapi shakes her head. “I do like you, Linny, but I _did_ make you promise not to tell anyone else about us. This is a bit much, isn’t it?”

“To be fair,” Linhardt says, glancing at either side of himself, “I didn’t tell them anything. They found out entirely on their own.”

And it’s true. Flayn, currently absorbed on some book detailing the lesser-known accounts on the Four Saints’ lives, had discovered Abyss through the whole incident with the Death Knight, which is the (fitting) moniker they’ve given to the strangely-armored knight. Just before the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, Flayn had practically forced her way into the Black Eagles class, and then spent her class time sneaking down in here to wreak havoc on the Shadow Library—working out the method to open the wall was too difficult, but she apparently had no qualms about going through the dungeon instead. On the other hand, Lysithea, engrossed on an ancient text detailing the history of reason and faith magic, had found the wall entrance when she was practicing her magic nearby and her spells opened it up while Linhardt was coincidentally down there as well. So, really, it isn’t Linhardt’s fault they’re now here next to him, paying absolutely zero attention to Hapi and Yuri.

“That reminds me, Lysithea,” Linhardt says, turning to look at her. She doesn’t look back at him, though she mutters something that could either be his name or just a word on the book. “Have you told the professor about transferring classes yet?”

That gets her attention. She looks up at him with a scowl. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t plan on transferring!”

“You say that, but you’ve been sitting in on lectures nearly everyday now, so… is it not only a matter of time?”

“Ugh. Just a few more days, and I’ll make my decision.”

A few more days? Lysithea’s been attending Byleth’s classes since Linhardt had first suggested she join. Granted, it had started because Byleth had used Linhardt’s notes as reference for his discussion that day, but he’s actually learned quite a lot at an impressive rate and no longer needs too much help anymore, so at least Lysithea’s joining would be (mostly) from his own efforts.

Yuri drums his fingers in an impatient beat on the table. “Uh, hel- _lo?_ We _are_ still here, if you somehow forgot about us. Now, do you _mind_ getting back up to the surface? You have a perfectly functioning library up there, for your information!”

“Ugh, but it’s such an _incomplete_ library,” Linhardt grumbles. “Haven’t I told you this already? Professor Seteth filters out so many books that the _real_ informative ones are all down here. Look, this will pay off in the end. All three of us will owe you favors, so giving us some _quiet_ and _peaceful_ reading time here should be no problem for you.”

“Quiet and peaceful? I’ve been getting complaints that the three of you never shut up about discussions on magic or what the hell ever.”

Linhardt tucks some loose hair behind his ear. “That sounds like a you problem.”

“Okay, _okay,_ ” Hapi says, before Yuri can presumably reach over the table and strangle Linhardt to death, “how about we both just… calm down! Linny, Yuri-bird, you two can go at it _later._ ”

“Linny?” Yuri laughs.

“ _Yuri-bird?_ ” Linhardt snorts.

Hapi looks like she is physically restraining the urge to sigh the library into ruin. “Can you just quit bringing more people down here? I mean, from my perspective, it kind of looks like you’re building a harem of mages—”

“Harem?” Linhardt looks at either side of him. Lysithea and Flayn? They already look younger than they actually are. Why does everyone keep assuming he’s into _that?_ Besides, he’s fairly sure Lysithea would sooner kick him down a flight of stairs than do anything even remotely romantic with him.

“—and, like, I guess they found their own way down here, but still.” Hapi crosses her arms, looking quite proud of herself, though Linhardt hasn’t exactly agreed to anything. He supposes getting him to only interrupt once is a feat in of itself. “So? Do we have a deal?”

“What were the conditions again?”

“Stop bringing girls down here,” Yuri leers.

Ah, so that means Linhardt can bring men. “I didn’t bring them here, but alright,” he agrees. “Since this is a deal, I assume I’ll be getting something in return too?”

Hapi shrugs. “Aside from free access to Abyss? Can’t think of anything better.”

“Hmph… fine,” Linhardt grumpily concedes. He knows a losing battle when he sees one.

He hadn’t lied—Lysithea and Flayn really do come down here of their own volition, Linhardt doesn’t drag them down underground like some predator—but he _does_ have his reasons for being down here more often than before. No one bothers him in Abyss, for one: everyone seems to instinctively understand he’d rather be left alone, or the people here at least know to keep to themselves and mind their own business, far unlike his own classmates. Linhardt shudders just thinking about them. Hubert’s been steadily trying to get Linhardt to talk more about how he learned dark magic, while Edelgard is back to berating him for slacking off during class. And, while Byleth is aware of where he sneaks off to so frequently, he makes no move to follow Linhardt down here.

Best of all, Caspar doesn’t know about this place.

Linhardt sighs, staring blankly down at the book before him. It’s been almost two months since their argument now, and they’ve barely exchanged more than five words to each other, much less had a full conversation. Even during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, they had stayed on opposite ends of the field—Caspar teamed up with Petra and Hubert while Linhardt stayed near Edelgard to heal any of their classmates who returned in need of help.

But it’s fine. This is what he’d intended to happen with that argument, isn’t it? As long as Caspar stays away, as long as Caspar keeps his distance, as long as Caspar hates him, he won’t want to help Linhardt out. He’ll find some other best friend—like Ashe, who just recently transferred to their class from the Blue Lions—and stick by their side instead. And as long as Caspar doesn’t go anywhere near Linhardt, then the dark mages won’t go anywhere near Caspar either.

So why does Linhardt’s master plan have to hurt so _much?_

Lysithea suddenly jolts to attention beside him, startling Linhardt and the other three around them. Huh, he hadn’t even noticed Hapi and Yuri chatting away about something in front of him. “What?” Lysithea exclaims to thin air. “Yes, I’m with Linhardt. Alright, understood, we’ll be right there.”

Linhardt stares at her. “Are you quite alright?”

“Edelgard just contacted me,” Lysithea says, getting to her feet so hastily that the chair clatters behind her. Yuri lets out an affronted noise. “Apparently the situation at Remire Village has changed for the worse, something about the villagers attacking each other—we’re to be at the monastery gates as soon as possible. The rest of our class is already there. Linhardt, hurry up and come on!”

“Ah, wait! I-I should go as well!” Flayn cries, jumping up and latching on to Lysithea’s side. “I am part of the class too now, after all! If the villagers are hurt, I can help with the healing!”

Linhardt reluctantly puts his books away. Did Lysithea _have_ to tell Edelgard that she’s with him right now? “Did you just refer to the Eagles as ‘our’ class?”

Lysithea tries to swat him over the head, but she’s so short that Linhardt doesn’t even have to try and move out of the way to dodge her attack. “Just hurry up!”

“Ugh. Fine.” Linhardt turns back to face Yuri and Hapi, both of whom look nonplussed. “Well, you’re free to accompany us, if you like. Do a good deed and all that. I’ll even consider visiting less often if you take my place for this exploration…”

Hapi shakes her head, looking bored, but now Yuri looks concerned. “Did you say villagers were attacking each other? That sounds serious.” He glances over at Hapi, then says, “Hapi, you stay here and take care of the place with Constance and Balthus while I’m out. It shoudn’t take too long.”

“Whoa, wait, _you’re_ going out, Yuri-bird?” Hapi gawks. “What’s with the sudden change of pace? I thought you’d rejoice in the opportunity to let poor Linny here get stabbed.”

“Thanks,” Linhardt says.

Yuri huffs. “This isn’t about Linhardt, it’s about the villagers. Besides, if it’s Remire, I might know some people there, and I’d rather not have been indirectly responsible for their deaths. Alright? Let’s get going. Sure hope that professor of yours still remembers me, or else I’m gonna look like a stray inviting itself in the place.”

Hapi stares at him consideringly for a long while. Then, under her breath, she mutters, “So, _tsundere_ type, huh…”

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing. Enjoy your… outing, Yuri-bird.”

None of them are particularly experienced with the Warp spell (yet—Linhardt’s working on it), so they have to run up to the surface. Yuri outpaces them in a blink, unsurprisingly enough. “I wasn’t aware you learned communication magic so quickly,” Linhardt says. “Is it difficult? From where did you learn it from?”

Lysithea frowns. “I asked for that blonde girl’s help, actually. Constance is her name, I think? She invented it herself, or so she says. Ah, it uses faith magic, though, so it’s a little more difficult to twist it for my own usage.”

Linhardt hums thoughtfully. Faith magic is certainly much harder to take control of compared to reason and dark. But the communication magic the mage had used all those years ago had certainly been that of dark magic… which means it must have its strengths when compared to Constance’s. He’ll have to ask her about it later, and see if he can modify it for his own as well.

They join up with the rest of the Eagles back on the surface—most of them cast Yuri confused looks, but say nothing when he strides over to keep pace with Byleth at the front of the class. The walk to Remire isn’t long either, and Linhardt spends it sandwiched between Lysithea and Flayn, both of whom are chattering rapidly about the different spells they’ve been learning and reading up on. Caspar is near the front, axe slung over his shoulder, gesturing wildly to Ashe beside him.

It’s for the best, Linhardt tells himself. As long as he’s far away. As long as he’s safe.

Remire is worse than he expected—probably half the villagers look like they’ve been possessed by something, by the way they’re screeching and attacking other villagers. Most of the village is on fire, too, and Linhardt coughs at the thick plumes of smoke surrounding them. Ahead, Captain Jeralt frowns. “Saints… this is going to be tough. Alright, spread out and rescue as many living as you can. At least one healer in each group.”

“Captain, Professor, there seems to be a… strange group over there,” Edelgard says, squinting, and Linhardt tries to follow. The flames and wreckage obscure most of his vision, but there are definitely a handful of silhouettes at what must be the town square, calm and unmoving. “This must be no ordinary infection either. They’re likely the perpetrators of this.”

Byleth nods. “Focus on saving the villagers first. Then show no mercy.”

Linhardt can never really grow used to how Byleth acts on the battlefield—with how much he bumbles about during class and how awkwardly he speaks to some of the students, Linhardt forgets he was a mercenary first before anything else in his life, if what Byleth tells him is true. But now isn’t the time for that—he teams up with Ferdinand and Flayn, the two closest to him, and the situation is serious enough that Ferdinand foregoes the noble speech for once and leads them to the eastern part of the village.

Healing is easy. It used to be harder, back when Linhardt feared dark magic was the only type of magic he could harness anymore, but faith magic is loyal to a fault, and it worked for him then despite his own misgivings. It’s only grown easier throughout the school year, where Linhardt’s been pushed to use more faith than dark magic to provide support for his classmates, who do all the fighting for him, most of the time. With Flayn at his side, who’s managed to learn the Rescue spell, and Ferdinand in front of them, taking on the infected villagers, Linhardt almost wonders if this is too good to be true.

They round the corner, and Linhardt immediately regrets having thought that. “Tomas?”

Tomas doesn’t hear him, too far away as he is, but Linhardt sees him all the same. His vision is bad, but not bad enough to hallucinate the head librarian of the monastery library in the middle of all this bloodshed and carnage—he’s still got that unnerving genial smile of his in place, and he’s still dressed in his usual robes. “What in the…? What is Tomas doing here?” Ferdinand exclaims, ushering Flayn behind his back. “It cannot be… is he perhaps—”

“No.” Linhardt’s throat is closing up on him, and suddenly the smoke in the air smells more like miasma—the saliva on his tongue tastes more like mire. “Don’t engage. We—the villagers first. It looks like there are more over there.”

“But—”

“Let’s go,” Linhardt urges. Ferdinand looks like he might argue, but thankfully his noble upbringing to prioritize the common people helps here, because he nods and rushes off. Linhardt hadn’t been lying anyway—from here he really can see a scuffle between two villagers. That should give him some time.

But for some reason, Flayn doesn’t follow; she stares up at him instead, gaze searching. “You know something, do you not?” she whispers, voice nearly inaudible over the noise around them. “You spend such time in the monastery library, even more than I. That Tomas… is he not what he seems?”

Sometimes Linhardt forgets his suspicions about Flayn’s supposed age. “Go with Ferdinand,” he says, in lieu of answering her question. “This is something I must take care of on my own.”

“Wait—Linhardt!” she cries, but Linhardt’s already turned around and running past Flayn, past Ferdinand and the villagers, circling around until he’s directly behind Tomas.

There’s no doubt now: Linhardt can feel the dark magic from a mile away, the same dark magic he’s been sensing from all the ‘infected’ villagers. He should have known, he should have _known,_ he should have known when he and Flayn had been kidnapped and he picked up on that too-familiar smell—no, he should have known the very instant he laid eyes on Tomas, at the very beginning of the school year. If he had known, maybe this wouldn’t have had to happen—so many people dead, so much of the village burnt down to nothing—

No, he can’t fix what has been done now. But he _can_ fix this—

“ _Linhardt!_ ”

—is what he thinks right before Byleth comes barreling out of nowhere to shove him to the ground. Linhardt falls hard with a strangled yelp, and he’s fairly sure his spine cracks a little there, but somehow Byleth manages to keep his head from hitting the ground and possibly splitting his skull in two. “B-Byleth?” Linhardt groans. “What are you—”

“Don’t do it,” Byleth says, eyes wide and alarmed. “Don’t even think about it. Don’t engage with him. Let me take care of this, or else—”

Linhardt narrows his eyes. Somehow Byleth must have realized Tomas’ real identity before even Linhardt… so why is he stopping Linhardt here now? Does he think he’s too weak for this? “Don’t try and stop me,” Linhardt grinds out, shoving Byleth off of him, but Byleth holds fast. This position is awkward—Byleth’s hovering above him, practically pinning him to the ground, which would make things extremely questionable if anyone else saw them right now. “I told you a long time ago, Byleth—this is my battle. I intend to see it to the end.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“What is it, exactly, that I do not understand?” Linhardt snaps, and apparently that startles Byleth enough for him to draw back. Linhardt wriggles out from underneath him, getting to his feet too fast that the world spins for a dizzying moment. The smoke and fire and _darkness_ in the air doesn’t help. “I find myself _quite_ tired of hearing that phrase. I appreciate the concern, but it is the least necessary thing right now.”

He turns around and readies his magic, but Byleth grabs his wrist so hard Linhardt’s fairly sure a bit more strength in the action would have ripped his arm off his shoulder. “Linhardt, I saw you _die._ ”

That gives Linhardt pause. “You—what?”

Byleth opens his mouth, but whether if it is to explain or to spout more vague, cryptic words Linhardt doesn’t get the chance to find out; behind them and in front of Tomas, Edelgard’s shouting, “You! Tomas! What are you doing here!?”

“Fools. I am not _Tomas._ ”

The swirl of dark magic—

“Ah—” Linhardt steps back, stumbles on a rock—Byleth catches him before he can fall, but Linhardt wishes he had just fallen, if only because he needs something, anything, to distract himself from the sight before him right now.

That wrinkled, paper-white skin—those eyes— _this smell—those hands—if you want your friend alive do not even think of calling out to him—I am sure you need no reminder of what will happen if you refuse to comply—_

Byleth’s grip on his wrist is tight enough to squeeze bone. “Linhardt, stop. Calm down. If you rush in now—”

“Let go of me.”

Byleth hisses and yanks his arm back at the mire that sizzles through his glove. Guilt flashes through Linhardt’s chest, but only for a moment—he grabs the opportunity and bolts towards Tomas—no, _Solon._ He can hear it already, the hissing of Jormungand, the head of the serpent rearing back and baring its poison-dipped fangs. _Here,_ Linhardt wants to say, _I’ll give you something to be proud of._

He’d half-expected the two soldiers on either side of Solon to notice him, and he flings his arms out—he summons mire to melt the arrow from the archer, and he wrestles control of the spell the mage fires at him, turning it back on the caster without a second thought. “ _Solon!_ ” Linhardt shouts, louder than he’s ever shouted before—Solon whirls around, and Linhardt sees red. “You… _You!_ ”

There’s no confusion, no shock on his face—Solon’s lips stretch into a grin so wide his skin seems to crack and flake away from the effort. “If it isn’t our finest experiment,” he croons, sickeningly sweet. “You’ve grown up so _well._ ”

This time Linhardt doesn’t cry, doesn’t cower away, doesn’t curl up in a ball and lick his wounds like a wild animal. There is no fear nor hesitation when he sends a pair of banshees shrieking over towards Solon—Solon grabs control of one and deflects it towards Linhardt, but he dispels the magic before it can reach him and calls on mire to wrap around Solon’s ankles and keep him in place. The other banshee reaches Solon, its gaping mouth stretching further and seemingly swallowing up the entirety of Solon’s upper body, its screeches deafening, before Solon grabs it and turns it into dust as well.

“Why, but your magic hasn’t improved in the least,” Solon remarks, only _now_ looking genuinely surprised. Behind him, Linhardt can glimpse Edelgard looking confounded and Jeralt utterly bewildered. “This might be even _weaker_ than four years ago. Don’t tell me… have you been holding yourself back? _Restraining_ your magic, _crushing_ your potential?”

“You know _nothing_ about me,” Linhardt snarls. Mire is dripping out from beneath his fingernails, a sign he’s about to overdo it—he’s never cast more than a few spells consecutively, much less two Banshee spells at once, but it doesn’t matter how much magic he’ll have to pour into this. He _will_ see Solon dead. If he can just buy some time, gather the energy he needs for Jormungand… “The past four years… Do you know what you did to me?”

Solon sneers. “Of course I do. I’ve given you everything. I’ve _made_ you who you are today. Tell me, child… how is your little friend doing?”

Linhardt is very dimly aware of a select few things: Byleth, behind him, rapidly approaching and probably about to forcibly drag him out of the village entirely. Edelgard, in front of him, shouting something drowned out by the rest of the noise around them. There are flames licking at his feet, soon killed by the miasma leaking out of his pores, snuffing the nearest fires out. _A large spell can very well kill you,_ the magic inside him is whispering. _You can’t do this. Pull back. At least take him on with someone else._

Jormungand, inside him, coiled, waiting, ready.

 _This is my fight alone,_ Linhardt responds.

He stretches his arms out, slowly. Solon makes no move to avoid him, still smiling smugly as if he’s already won, but Linhardt knows dark magic bows and obeys not to the most forceful strength but to the strongest will, and Linhardt can’t imagine this man, toying with him like a cat with its paw on a mouse’s tail, can wrestle control of his own magic from him now.

Light flashes in his eye, and it is not from the fires. His palms slice themselves open, blood and mire alike trickling from the gashes. The snake hisses, the beginning of its shadow tearing its way out of his wounds—

Someone shouts, nearly as loud as the earlier banshees. Solon falters, confusion flickering across his face.

And then an axe descends on him.

Linhardt is, for the second time within the past five minutes, shoved to the ground by Byleth; the magic dies in his hands. “What the— _Caspar?_ ”

“Take that!” Caspar yells. It’s definitely Caspar, no matter how many times Linhardt blinks and rubs his eyes and tries to make sense of the situation; based off where he had come from, it’s probably safe to assume he had clambered up a nearby house and leapt off its roof to land atop Solon’s shoulders. Now he’s swinging his axe this way and that, cutting deep into Solon’s arms. “And that! And that! How do you like _that!_ ”

“What—get away from me, you rat!”

Linhardt’s mouth dries up. “ _No—_ ” He reaches out with the one arm Byleth hasn’t pinned down and somehow manages to grab onto and dispel Solon’s rushed Banshee spell before it would have hit Caspar, but Caspar wobbles and falls off Solon’s shoulders all the same, tumbling down onto the ground behind him. “Caspar!” he yells, scrambling wildly and—did he just kick Byleth in the face? Whatever, as long as he can move—“Caspar, get away from him, now!”

“No way, Lin! Don’t give me that crap!” Caspar shouts back, and Linhardt’s too stunned to respond right away. “This is one of the guys who hurt you back then, isn’t he? Then it’s only right I give him a piece of my mind!”

He picks up his axe again, but despite bleeding heavily, Solon’s recovered enough to send mire splashing onto the weapon—Caspar swears when a handful of drops land on his hand, the slime eating away at his skin. Linhardt hurries forward, managing to shove Solon to the side before he crumples to his knees beside Caspar. The Heal spell has never come to his hands quicker, and he doesn’t even wince at the new cuts opening up along his arms. “You idiot,” Linhardt whispers. “You _idiot._ I told you to just leave me alone, I _told_ you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Caspar grumbles back. “You didn’t say anything like that. To me, it just—”

“ _You two,_ ” someone snaps out, and it takes Linhardt a shamefully long moment to register the voice as Edelgard’s. When did she even get from behind them to suddenly in front of them, with Hubert at her side, taking control of another one of Solon’s spells? “Do you _mind_ saving the emotional conversation for _after_ the battle?”

“Good point,” Caspar admits. He stands up and Linhardt makes to follow, but it turns out Linhardt has drastically overestimated himself, because he wobbles and keels over as soon as he tries to stand. “Whoa, hell—Linhardt, you alright? What happened to you? You—Your hands!”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine…”

“This does _not_ look fine to me. We’re getting you out of here.” Caspar slings one of Linhardt’s arms over his back, and the position is so familiar that Linhardt lets himself rest his full weight on Caspar’s shoulders. Has Caspar always been this comfortingly strong, this reassuringly reliable? Linhardt glances behind them for a second, just long enough to see Jeralt and Byleth joining in the fight against Solon.

The anger from earlier has completely left him, and now Linhardt just feels drained and exhausted beyond belief. Not ten minutes earlier he had wanted to rip Solon limb from limb with the same magic he had given him; now Linhardt just wants to wrap his arms around Caspar and never let go again. “How could you do that?” Linhardt rasps.

“Do what?” Caspar’s hobbling over towards the entrance to the village, where most of the villagers are gathered. Dorothea and Yuri are both there, healing up any of the injured.

“Do something so _reckless,_ ” Linhardt hisses, “and impulsive, and dangerous, and ridiculous, and… and…” He swallows, shakes his head. “And… brave?”

Caspar only sighs. “Lin, come on. Don’t you know me by now?”

“I thought you hated me. Anyone would, after what I said.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, the thing is,” Caspar says, almost _nonchalantly,_ “it didn’t really sound like you at all.”

Linhardt stares at him, as best as he can in their position. “I… what?”

“I mean, I was stressed out over it for days and nights afterwards,” Caspar explains, sounding embarrassed, “but… I don’t know. It just didn’t seem like you. It’s not that you’re not allowed to be angry with me sometimes, ‘cause the goddess knows we’re total freaking opposites, but… you know we’ve known each other for forever, right? And I can tell when you’re lying by now, Lin.”

“…Ah.”

Caspar laughs, and it’s tinged with a sadness that twists Linhardt’s heart. “Yeah, see? I can’t explain it, but I just know when you don’t mean what you say. You sound a certain way when you’re hurt but trying to hide it, or when you’re lying to get out of something. I know everything about you by now, Lin! So trying to drive me away like that… what was it for? Hell if I know. But I _do_ know that I can’t just leave you alone when you’re in danger, and it wasn’t hard to figure out that Solon guy was involved with what happened to you before.”

“Caspar…” Linhardt rests his chin atop Caspar’s shoulder. “I… shouldn’t have called you an idiot. I’m the real idiot here.”

“What! Can you say that again? When there are more people around?”

“Oh, hush. Look, I…” It’s getting harder to keep his voice steady. “I’m sorry, I… I shouldn’t have said all of that. Everything. I don’t blame you for a thing, I never have, I could _never._ I just—I was so scared. I _am_ scared, for you more than anything.” Linhardt tries to swallow again, but his mouth is so dry it hurts. “I thought… as long as you hated me, as long as you didn’t care about me… I could keep you away from those dark mages. I could keep you safe.”

They’re at the entrance now, and Caspar helps Linhardt sit down and lean against a wall first before crouching down and tapping his nose. “You really _are_ an idiot, Lin,” Caspar tells him, though it’s hard to take that seriously when his eyes are rimmed red and blurry with tears. “As if a lie as flimsy as that could have made me hate you! If you insist on a next time, t-try a little harder! I really—I really almost thought you hated me for a second there!”

“You’re crying,” Linhardt points out.

Caspar scrubs at his eyes for a few furious seconds before pointing at Linhardt’s face. “ _You’re_ crying too!”

“I am not,” Linhardt says, but when he reaches up and touches his cheeks, they’re stained wet with neither blood nor mire, but with saltwater. “Oh, maybe I am,” he murmurs to himself, though his voice is much shakier than that.

Caspar sniffs wetly. “So… So, um, we’re alright again, aren’t we?”

“What?”

“I mean, we don’t have to sit on opposite sides of the classroom and pretend the other doesn’t exist anymore? Like, I can eat with you during lunch and dinner now, right?”

“Oh.” Linhardt gestures for Caspar to come closer, and when Caspar does, Linhardt wraps his arms around Caspar’s neck and tugs him as close as physically possible. Caspar splutters in surprise for a moment, but returns the hug anyway. “Of course,” Linhardt says, voice muffled against Caspar’s uniform. “Of course. I’m sorry, I’m… I…”

“Hey, hey, i-it’s okay, man, don’t cry…”

Linhardt cries. He buries his face in Caspar’s shoulder and stains his uniform wet with tears and doesn’t care in the least about the villagers or their classmates or even Solon, whether he’s dead or alive or _whatever._ For a moment he had so very nearly forgotten the most important thing—he can chase after the dark mages later, can think about his impending doom and shortened lifespan some other time.

For now—Caspar is safe. They both are. For now, yes, but Linhardt pretends right now can last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [jormungand](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Jormungand) is an actual dark magic spell from the FE universe, albeit not one available in FE3H, but this sign won't stop me because i can't read! (if you remember, linhardt's magic was also described as a snake within him in chapter 1.)  
> \- [ruin](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Ruin), briefly mentioned in this chapter, is also an actual FE, but non-FE3H, dark magic spell
> 
> i pray to god we actually reach post-skip by next chapter but coming from me? sounds like a joke


	4. the red string of fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _An invisible string or cord, sometimes called the “red thread of marriage,” tied around the fingers of two people fated to meet together. The string may stretch or tangle, but never break. It is said to be seen by only a very select few people capable of manipulating fate itself._ ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_thread_of_fate))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one has an equal balance (hopefully) between both plotty and shippy moments! also this is the last chapter of pre-timeskip, finally. hope you enjoy!  
> also note for mild, one-sided, appreciative(?) byhardt near the beginning. it doesn't really mean anything though/there are no actual emotions or feelings attached aside from thirst LOL

Solon gets away. Linhardt can’t say he isn’t disappointed, but he also can’t bring himself to care. No, his real concern is:

“For the last time, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Byleth says, which would be more convincing if he hasn’t been sweating buckets for the past several minutes. “You must have heard wrong. I said nothing of the sort.”

Linhardt massages his forehead. Then, in as high-pitched a voice as possible, he cries, “ _No, you don’t understand! Linhardt, I saw you die!_ ”

Byleth turns away with a pout. “I do not sound like that.”

“Yes, you do,” Linhardt says, using his normal voice again. He takes a sip of his tea, idly watching Byleth squirm in place, then sets his cup down and continues. “Will you give up yet? I heard what you said clear as day back there, so you may as well just tell me already before I take matters into my own hands and get the answer out of you myself.”

He hadn’t actually had anything in mind when he’d said that, but to Linhardt’s amusement Byleth visibly stiffens. Does he still remember what Linhardt had done the first few days after finding out about Byleth’s Crest? He’s sure his questioning hadn’t been that bad… probably. “One condition,” Byleth offers.

“I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that. What will it be?” Linhardt looks down at his tea. There’s only a bit more, so he might as well finish it.

“Be the representative for the White Heron Cup.”

Linhardt chokes.

“It could have been literally _anyone_ else,” Linhardt grumbles. “Dorothea. Ferdinand. Hubert. Lysithea. Even that strange Monica Edelgard picked up like a stray from the village. _So_ many choices, and he had to pick _me._ ”

“Well, that’s what you get for being the teacher’s pet, Lin.” Caspar gnaws on a chicken leg. Linhardt’s chicken leg, actually. He simply hasn’t had the appetite for anything since hearing Byleth’s words. “Why don’t you just say no? I don’t think Professor would be mean enough to force you into it.”

“No, well… It’s my end of a deal.”

“A deal?”

“Yes. In exchange, I’ll get to…” Linhardt trails off. Should he be telling Caspar about this? It’s not his secret to share, but at the same time, he’s quite tired of keeping secrets all the time. Fine, he’ll settle for something in-between. “I’ll get to find out more about him.”

Caspar’s eyebrows rise. “Uh… like… his Crest? Haha! Right, his Crest, t-that’s what you mean, right?”

“Well, I suppose,” Linhardt muses. Whatever Byleth had said _might_ be connected to his Crest, after all; his previous research had yielded few concrete results, and Linhardt’s pored over his gathered data dozens of times by now that he can recite some of it word-for-word. Perhaps he’ll be able to add some more information to it once he finishes up this pesky Cup? The prospect is too good to pass up, even when dancing will be involved.

Caspar looks unconvinced, but doesn’t press the subject. Instead, he says, “So how’re you going to practice for the contest? I mean, you’re not just gonna do a little waltz and win, right?”

Linhardt blinks. “Professor only said I should be the representative for our class. He didn’t mention anything about winning.”

Caspar groans. “What am I gonna do with you—Lin, it’s a _competition!_ Of _course_ you have to win!”

“Sounds like a bother. I’m going to sleep.”

“Hey, wait, no! Do you even remember how to waltz anymore?”

Linhardt frowns. “I’m… sure the movements will come to me.” In truth, he doubts any of those dance lessons Father had pushed him into when he was about eleven years old had remained, except for, perhaps, the perpetual air of irritation he had carried during those days. “It’s not a concern, really. As long as I participate, I’ll be upholding my end of the deal, so it doesn’t matter whether I win or lose. But…”

Caspar, who looked like he had been steadily building himself up to launch into a competitive argument, blinks. “But?”

“But I suppose one practice session can’t hurt,” Linhardt says. “To prevent Edelgard from throttling me after the contest, at the very least.” He doesn’t even want to think about what he might hear from her if he does humiliatingly terrible. He can almost hear the beginning of the you-have-brought-shame-unto-the-Black-Eagles tangent already.

Caspar brightens. “Alright! Linhardt, let’s—”

“I’ll go ask the professor for help, then.” Linhardt stands up from the dining table, stretching his arms over his head. “I won’t have as much time to read later, but better get it over with as soon as possible…”

Caspar’s jaw drops. “Wait, what? The _professor?_ Wait—right now? It’s evening! And— _the professor?_ ”

Linhardt blinks at him. “Why so surprised?”

“Well, it’s already nighttime, for one thing! Normally you’d practice something like this at a reasonable time of day! And, come on, _the professor?_ ” Caspar looks close to ripping his hair out. “Does he even know how to dance? I mean, they’re probably going to expect the sorta stuff they taught us nobles, and you know the last time we ever saw the professor dance was, well, _never!_ ”

“Oh.” Linhardt frowns. Caspar makes a good point. Still, who else is he going to ask if not the professor? Edelgard is already a taskmaster on the battlefield, and he’d rather not go through her picking out every single one of his mistakes. Dorothea would probably be too good for him to keep up. Hubert? Please. “Well, I’m sure any interesting moves he’ll have to teach me will intrigue the judges. And Byleth stays up quite late anyhow, so it shouldn’t be a problem… oh, excuse me, I mean Professor.”

Caspar gives him a skeptical look, following alongside him as Linhardt exits the dining hall. “Um, Lin… just wondering, but… is there something going on between you two?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I-I dunno, just wondering! ‘Cause, y’know, you two always seem so close and stuff. And just a while ago I saw you two having tea. Again. For, like… the third time this week.”

Perhaps Linhardt went overboard with pestering Byleth for an answer about what he meant during the Remire incident. Had he been too obvious, though? He should pester Byleth in the dark corners of the monastery next time, surely that won’t give anyone the wrong idea. “It’s good tea.”

“Uh, and everything else?” Caspar presses.

This is strange. Has Caspar always been this insistent when Linhardt makes a new friend? To be fair, Linhardt made a grand total of one friend before the academy, and that friend was Caspar, so maybe this was to be expected. “I’m not sure what you’re concerned about, but like I said, the professor is just someone I happened to know back then,” Linhardt explains, “and naturally we have much to talk about, whether about classes or other things.”

Caspar still looks troubled. “Well—I guess, but…”

“But?” Linhardt gently prompts. It’s unlike Caspar to be this upset without an obvious reason. Perhaps… “Could it be you want to be closer to the professor as well?”

“What? _No!_ ” Caspar yelps. “Nothing like that, Lin! It’s just… uh… oh, forget it!” And he crosses his arms over his chest with a sullen expression on his face.

Linhardt can’t remember the last time he felt this nonplussed. “Surely there’s a problem.”

“No! There isn’t!”

“…Alright,” Linhardt concedes. He’s not very convinced, but it doesn’t look like Caspar is going to say anything anytime soon, so he supposes they’ll just have to talk about it another time. “Anyway, why are you following me? Do you want to have dance practice too?”

“ _No,_ ” Caspar says, for what must be the third time in a row now, “but—well, _someone_ has to make sure you two don’t get into trouble or something! You know, just in case!”

“What exactly are you expecting the professor and I to get up to?”

Caspar’s face goes almost entirely red. “Lin—Lin— _Linhardt!_ ”

As Linhardt had expected, they find Byleth finishing up in the training grounds, along with a half-dozen cats snacking away on the basket of fish beside him. “Linhardt, Caspar,” he greets, setting the Creator Sword against a wall. “Are you going to train?”

“No… well, yes. Dancing training,” Linhardt responds.

“Dancing… training?”

Linhardt folds his arms. “Surely you don’t mean for me to walk into the White Heron Cup without some dance practice? You irresponsible professor, you.”

“Oh… right,” Byleth grumbles. Linhardt wonders if he’s second-guessing his choice to enter Linhardt as the representative now. “Fine, hold on a second.”

And then, for some unholy reason, he strips off his shirt.

Linhardt stumbles backwards and very nearly trips over one of the cats. “What the—Byleth! Have some decency!”

Byleth turns to face him—oh, he really shouldn’t have done that, oh _no,_ now Linhardt simply has no choice but to stare at his bare chest and torso and arms, the huge expanse of tanned skin gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat under the moonlight—“What? Did I do something wrong?”

“Yeah, what’s the problem?” Caspar asks, sounding genuinely confused, arms behind his head. “You gotta change after exercising or training!”

“What’s the _problem?_ ” Linhardt hisses, forcing his gaze down to the floor. Ugh, he supposes for _some_ people this wouldn’t be a big deal, but forgive _him_ for having eyes. Does Byleth _have_ to do that right now? Aren’t there changing rooms around here? Unable to resist, Linhardt allows himself one last peek, and his mouth instantly goes dry when his gaze drifts lower—Byleth’s trousers are loose, dipping just very slightly below his… navel…

“Oh! Oh, hell no!” Caspar yelps. He leaps before Linhardt’s line of sight before Linhardt can presumably start drooling, although Caspar’s so short he has to jump up and down to obscure much of anything. “No, Lin, look away, this is inappropriate! Cover your eyes! Professor, hurry up and put a shirt on!”

Of course, Byleth, being Byleth, only stands there looking confused. “Are you two alright?”

Somehow Linhardt manages to survive that ordeal without losing his head, although now he thinks he’s going to be plagued by some very troubling thoughts every night for at least a week from now. Caspar swings an axe around grumpily at the side while Byleth, in a new change of clothes, awkwardly gets into position with Linhardt for the basic waltz. “You know I don’t know much about this sort of thing,” Byleth mutters. “Why don’t you ask Dorothea for help?”

Linhardt hums. Byleth’s hand in his is terribly distracting, but at the very least, he isn’t half-naked anymore. “You’re the one who pushed me into this, so take some responsibility. Anyway, I’ll just use you to practice. Maybe I’ll miraculously remember some old dance lessons.”

Byleth is a terrible dancer, but he learns quick, and soon Linhardt has more or less remembered the movements of the ballroom waltz again. By the time Linhardt can do the box step without stepping on either of their feet, Caspar has given up on training and is sitting at the side, staring boredly at their probably clumsy motions. “Caspar, if you’re just going to sit there, you may as well go and do so in the comfort of your own room,” Linhardt suggests.

“And leave you two alone? No thanks!”

“Why are you under the impression we need a chaperone?” Linhardt stares down at Byleth. He hadn’t realized the other was this much shorter than him, although that may be because he’s wearing heeled shoes today, so he’s even taller than usual. _Hmm… maybe…_ On the next step he lets go of Byleth, whose eyes widen in surprise before he slips and falls, just for Linhardt to catch him and pull him back up, close enough for their chests to touch.

Caspar shouts, “Because you’ll go and do something like _that!_ ”

Byleth looks dizzy. “What… That was…”

“Was it too sloppy? I think I did quite well for a first try,” Linhardt muses. After all, Byleth hadn’t cracked his skull on the floor, so surely that counts for something. “Shall we do that again?” He can’t deny it feels nice having Byleth so close to him, too.

Caspar throws his hands up in the air. “You know what? Forget it. You two go have fun on your own, see if I care!” And he stomps off, slamming the training grounds doors behind him.

Linhardt scratches his cheek. “Why on earth is he getting so worked up?”

“No idea,” Byleth responds, helpfully. “Maybe he didn’t have enough for dinner earlier.”

“Well, I’ll just have to talk to him about it later. More importantly, Byleth,” Linhardt says, turning to face him again, “I’m assuming you signed me up for the White Heron Cup already, which means I’ve technically held up my end of the deal. Now will you tell me what it is you meant by those words back then?”

Byleth sighs. “Was this a ploy to speak to me about this? I should have known.”

“Please do answer the question.”

So Byleth does. None of it is terribly surprising—Linhardt already knew about his Crest, of course, and some of his far-fetched theories actually end up being true, including the part about the goddess residing within Byleth and being the reason he can wield the Creator Sword as he can. “She says hello, by the way,” Byleth suddenly says. “Sothis, I mean.”

“Oh, my. I’m honored, goddess.”

Byleth pauses, gaze distant for a moment, then says, “She says you’re a fool.”

“Oh, my,” Linhardt says again, now distinctly more intrigued. “Such barbed words. A fool in what area, exactly?”

“Friendship.”

“Ah, does she know something about Caspar’s behavior?”

A lengthy pause passes until Byleth sighs. “She tells you to figure it out yourself, and also to stop being so thick-headed sometimes, and also to get better at dancing because right now you are bringing shame onto humankind. I’m sorry. She’s always like this, if it’s any reassurance. Actually, I think she’s worse to me.”

Linhardt smiles. “Please, don’t apologize. This is all quite interesting.” He had vastly underestimated just how much information he’ll have to study later tonight. Oh, if only he could get Byleth into his dorm room as well! For research purposes, of course. “So you can turn back time, I see… what happened in Remire? In the future you saw.”

“I didn’t simply see it.”

“Ah, yes.” Linhardt dips his head in apology. “In the future you lived in.”

Byleth is silent for a long while, and Linhardt spends that time guiding him through some of the steps he vaguely remembers from childhood lessons—a step here, a stretch there. Finally, he speaks, so low Linhardt barely hears him. “You summoned… that snake again.”

“Jormungand.”

“I’ve never even heard of such a spell.”

“According to the book I found it in, it isn’t magic of this world, though what that means I have no idea,” Linhardt says. He really should learn more about that someday, if he wishes to keep using it in the future, but that’s a worry for another time. “Go on. What happened after?”

Byleth breathes in deep, then lets it out in a long sigh. “You managed to drive that man—Solon away somehow. But your hands wouldn’t stop bleeding.” He pauses, swallows. “You died so slowly. It… hurt.”

A painful death. Linhardt rolls the concept around in his head. He can tell Byleth is visibly uncomfortable just retelling it, so he doesn’t press for more details, but Linhardt can’t help his curiosity. How did he look like? How did it feel like? He must have bled out from just his hands, then, and it looks like faith magic had no effect. Of course not—severe wounds caused by dark magic are different from regular ones. He can’t imagine Flayn or Dorothea knowing how to treat injuries like his.

“I thought I just had to keep you away from Solon, which is what I did… tried to do,” Byleth’s saying, softly. “I hadn’t factored Caspar in, but… it looks like you’re both alright, at least. That was good enough for me. We can find Solon another day.”

Linhardt nods. “You’re right. Well, at that time, you were just acting like quite the pesky fly I couldn’t shoo away—”

“Thank you.”

“—but I see now you were acting out of goodwill, so please accept both my gratitude and my apologies.”

Byleth looks close to rolling his eyes. “I… accept it. Anyway, it looks like you’ve changed, Linhardt. I thought you would have stopped at nothing to get back at Solon for… you know, everything.”

“I thought so too. But…”

Linhardt trails off, staring at a spot on Byleth’s shoulder. But what? He still wants Solon and the rest of those dark mages wiped off the face of the earth, of course. But at the same time, he can’t quite find it in himself to prioritize their destruction over Caspar’s… over everyone’s safety anymore. If he runs in recklessly into battle like that again, he only risks getting the people he cares about hurt, and next time they may not be so lucky to walk away uninjured. No, if Linhardt wants to see to it that those people pay for what they did to him…

The doors creak open, dragging Linhardt’s attention back to the present. Telling lavender eyes gleam under the light. “Oh, hello. Am I interrupting something here?” Yuri drawls. “It looks like you two are getting quite cozy in there. Excuse me, then—”

“Please come in,” Byleth says, dropping his hands from Linhardt’s shoulder immediately. “It was just dance practice.”

“Dance practice?” Yuri repeats, distinctly unconvinced.

“Dance practice.” Byleth nods. “Is something wrong, Yuri?”

“Ah, glad you asked.” Yuri slips in, pushing the doors shut behind him. “Remember our little friend down in the dungeons? I finally got some decent information out of him, though you’ll forgive me for how long it took. I must be getting rusty with my interrogation skills.”

Linhardt would rather not hear much more about Yuri’s interrogation skills, but he does remember: Yuri had managed to get one of those soldiers who had been working with (or for) the Death Knight into the dungeon’s chamber. Considering everything else that had happened afterwards, though, that concern had been pushed so far back in Linhardt’s priorities that he’d nearly forgotten about it entirely. “Well, go on. Don’t keep us waiting.”

“You never ask nicely, do you?” Yuri mutters. He straightens and crosses his arms. “First of all, they call themselves Agarthans. Sounds like a race of people, but who knows, could just be their organization name. And our lovely prisoner is just one of their many half-failed experiments. Judging by the similarities in his body that I found in the autopsies of those infected villagers in Remire, though,” he muses, now sounding more like he’s talking to himself, “I suspect they were trying to turn him into some… mind-controlled monster like what we experienced just a week or two ago.”

“Human experiments.” Linhardt stares down at his feet, scuffing them against the ground. “They haven’t changed a bit, it seems.”

Yuri casts him an inscrutable look, but continues. “Only other thing I got from him is that they needed that girl’s—Flayn’s? Flayn’s blood for their experiments. That must’ve been why they kidnapped her that time. But he was just a small fry, so he didn’t really know much other than that.”

Linhardt had probably been taken too because he’d been with Flayn at the time… that, and because they wouldn’t want their little weapon running around amok, he presumes with a scowl. “All very enlightening, Yuri. Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I put the guy out of his misery now, by the way, so don’t worry about him.” Then Yuri gives Byleth a look, this one even more indiscernible than earlier, and nods. “You need any help, just say so. See ya around. Have fun with your dance practice.” And he walks off, pulling the doors shut behind him.

Linhardt frowns. Agarthans… at least he now has a name to the dark mages. He’s never heard of the name before, though, nor does he think he’s read it in any books. Perhaps they’re some kind of organization as compared to a race of people, but who knows? Their next best lead would be to follow wherever Solon had escaped to, but apparently he had used a Warp spell, and the traces of magic he had left behind were too faint for even Hubert to analyze and pinpoint the location of. Funny that the whole monastery is more preoccupied with a dance competition than with tracking down a mass murderer, now that Linhardt thinks about it, but he supposes he shouldn’t have expected much from anyone in an exploitable position of power.

Byleth waves a hand before his face. “Linhardt? You looked like you were having deep thoughts there.”

“Blasphemous, not deep,” Linhardt corrects. Byleth shows absolutely no comprehension at all, which Linhardt has come to expect from him, so he moves on. “So we have something to go off of—Agarthans. I’m assuming the name isn’t familiar to you, Byleth?” At the head-shake, Linhardt sighs. “I thought so. What to do…”

“We could practice more,” Byleth offers. “I don’t think this is enough to win the contest.”

“Not interested. It’s late, so I’ll get going,” Linhardt says. He’s probably being abrupt again, but all that moving around had drained him more than he’d realized, and having a book in hand right now would feel wonderful. “Goodnight, Byleth. I promise to show up during the contest, if it makes you feel better.”

“Just show up?” Byleth mumbles.

“That’s more than most formal events have gotten from me, so be honored.”

Time passes. Linhardt, by some miracle, wins the White Heron Cup, and his grand prize is some ridiculous dancer costume he leaves to rot in his closet for as long as possible. He spends the celebratory ball eating as many sweets as he can find before passing out on Caspar’s shoulder for the remainder of the night. Lysithea finally joins the Black Eagles class, to absolutely no one’s surprise.

Captain Jeralt dies.

Monica, the village survivor they agreed to let stay in the monastery for a while, stabs him in the back and scampers off to escape with someone with unmistakable Agarthan features. There had been no hope of stopping her—it had all happened too fast, too sudden, and suddenly Jeralt was in Byleth’s arms, the rain falling around them, almost as heavy as Byleth’s shoulders had suddenly looked at that time. Linhardt had been with the rest of the students to the side, stunned into silence.

Professors Manuela and Hanneman teach most of their classes in the following moon. Linhardt sees Edelgard, Dorothea, and Ferdinand all try and fail to coax Byleth out of his room, so he doesn’t bother knocking on the door and spends most of his time feeding the stray cats near the dorms instead, watching Byleth’s room for any sign of movement. On the days Byleth does leave, he spends the time in the infirmary, where Professor Manuela and Mercedes from the Blue Lions House talk to him about things Linhardt decides not to listen in on.

Perhaps if he were a better person, he would have made an attempt: gone up to Byleth and told him, perhaps, about Mother and her Angelica herbs and her Wind magic. Linhardt would have told him how it felt when she had died, and how Caspar had stood outside his room everyday, talking to him, slipping a white ribbon under the door gap. Perhaps he would have told Byleth that Linhardt would be here for him now, too.

But he isn’t a better person, only himself. Linhardt watches Byleth from afar and says nothing still.

In the last week of the Guardian Moon, just as Byleth is starting to teach again and things almost seem to have started going back to normal, Edelgard tumbles through the classroom doors, huffing and panting. She’s uncharacteristically late, but all thoughts of class fly out of Linhardt’s head when she exclaims, “Professor! Everyone! They know where the enemy is—where Captain Jeralt’s killer is!”

Byleth has already dropped everything, shrugged on his coat, and grabbed the Creator Sword leaning against the wall before Edelgard’s even finished saying the words ‘Sealed Forest,’ only to halt in his tracks when he nearly runs into Archbishop Rhea and a small group of knights outside the classroom. “You,” Byleth says, his voice somehow both level and dangerous. “Out of my way.”

Rhea’s gaze is shadowed. “I’m afraid I cannot do that, Professor. Your thirst for revenge will only be your downfall—”

“Out. Of my way.” Byleth’s eyes are darker than Linhardt’s ever seen them before, and the sunlight glimmers threateningly off the blade of the Creator Sword. “I will not repeat myself twice.”

“L-Lady Rhea, our teacher acts not out of vengeance,” Edelgard hastens to say, placing herself between professor and archbishop before either one of them can strike first. “Sending us out there is the most strategic move we can make. The most capable knights are too distant to contact right away, and together with the rest of our classmates, the Black Eagles House is more formidable than you may think…”

Her speech seems to go on for at least a full minute before Rhea finally looks away from her and returns her gaze to Byleth. Linhardt hides an amused huff behind his hand at the irritation that flashes through Edelgard’s expression. “Fine. Professor Byleth, I shall place my trust in you. Do not do anything rash.”

Byleth tilts his chin upwards to better meet Rhea’s eyes. “I don’t remember answering to you,” is all he offers before turning back to face the rest of the class. “Stand. Come.”

They scramble out of the classroom, most of them avoiding Rhea’s gaze, but Linhardt observes her when she isn’t paying him attention—she exhales harshly like a dragon puffing out smoke from its snout, then turns to a fuming Seteth at her side and whispers something inaudible. Flayn, hurrying just beside Linhardt, casts her brother a worried glance before moving ahead.

No… brother? Linhardt has to laugh. He’s almost a hundred percent sure they’re related, just not as siblings. Still, he’ll have to concern himself with that later—right now there’s a murderer to take care of.

“We’ll split up into groups,” Byleth says, at the entrance to the Sealed Forest. “All of you, take care to ensure a variety of weapons, and have one healer with you at all times. Edelgard, Hubert, Linhardt, with me.”

“Wait—me?” Linhardt repeats.

“Professor!” Caspar shouts, sounding angrier than Linhardt’s heard him before. “If you’re bringing Lin, I’m coming too! No buts!”

Linhardt expects Byleth’s patience to snap, but instead he only nods. “Do what you wish. Just stay close and follow my every order.” Then, without waiting for a response, he sets off ahead—Edelgard gestures for them to hurry as well.

Twigs snap under their feet. Leaves rustle in the dry wind. There are soldiers wherever Linhardt looks, but Byleth’s Creator Sword snaps out like a whip, cutting down every enemy before they can get close to any of them. “You think Captain Jeralt’s killer is one of those Agarthans you mentioned, Lin?” Caspar whispers.

Linhardt frowns. “It’s certainly the only explanation, but I can’t understand why they would want to kill the professor’s father. Just for some bloodshed?”

“If that’s the case,” Caspar growls, “I’m gonna make ‘em pay.”

“Caspar…” Linhardt means to tell him he shouldn’t endanger himself, shouldn’t run out recklessly, but when have any of those words stopped Caspar before? The best he can do is to make sure Caspar doesn’t get more hurt than Linhardt can fix up, even if he has to sacrifice the recently-healed cuts on his arms to do so. “Just be careful.”

Caspar blinks, then grins up at him. “Yeah, ‘course. I’m not about to worry you again, Lin!”

Linhardt hasn’t completely mastered the communication magic just yet, but he can keep it long enough to hear Lysithea’s reports from the other groups: enemies subdued, mild injuries, Monica still unsighted but likely up ahead. He relays as such to Byleth in hopes of a response, but Byleth barely even looks at him—looks at them, really. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the path even once since they set off, and frankly Linhardt’s starting to wonder about Edelgard’s claim that Byleth isn’t acting on vengeance, since it’s starting to seem the complete opposite.

Not that he can blame him. Linhardt knows what it feels like, to hate and hate and be so consumed with hatred that it cuts open his palms and bursts out in the form of a snake. There would be no point in telling Byleth to calm down now, and honestly speaking, Linhardt doesn’t want to.

Then Byleth freezes in his steps—Edelgard nearly bumps against his back. “My teacher? What—”

“Shh.” Linhardt can’t see his face from here, but he’s certain Byleth’s eyes are narrowed. Around them, the wind blows harder, but the rustling of leaves does little to obscure the faint, barely-audible footsteps around them. Not ahead— _around._ Byleth tenses, coat flapping in the breeze. “She’s here.”

His sword lashes out, nearly slicing through tree trunks, but the shadow that leaps out from the gaps between trees isn’t that of Monica, but of some orange-haired girl with—Linhardt steps back—gray skin reminiscent of Solon’s. “Ah! You found me _way_ too quickly,” the girl protests, dodging every last one of Byleth’s attacks without even bothering to breathe in between words. “Couldn’t you have let me have a little more fun with you vermin?”

“Professor, be careful!” Edelgard shouts. She’s tensed to run in at a moment’s notice, but both Byleth and the girl are moving far too fast for her—or anyone, really—to try and step in. “I doubt those daggers are for show!”

Byleth says nothing until his sword finally catches the girl at her side, and she stumbles in her movements with a cry—he wastes no time in grabbing her and lifting her up by the neck, the tip of the Creator Sword poised to drive into her heart. “Who are you?” he growls. “Where is Monica?”

“Professor.” Linhardt steps forward, casting Edelgard an anxious look over his shoulder. “We should take her alive. She might—”

The girl cackles, the sound coming out strangled. “Fool! I was only using that pathetic girl’s appearance as a cover. My real name is Kronya!”

Linhardt’s words die in his throat.

Kronya. He’s heard that name before. The memory comes far too easily to him: the cold dungeon basement, the light from Macuil’s Crest, the dark mage crumpled at his feet and all ten fingers broken. _Kronya, drop it,_ they’d said. _We don’t need him anymore._

“You,” Linhardt whispers. Kronya tilts her head in his direction, her neck looking dangerously close to snapping at the angle. “You were going to kill him.”

“Hmm? What’s that?” Kronya laughs. “I’ve killed a lotta people in my life, little mouse. You’ll have to be more specific!”

Her speed, her agility, how fast she had killed Jeralt, how long she’s stayed hidden from them until now—she’s a trained assassin, and almost certainly the best person to send out to hunt someone down. Linhardt would be a fool to mistake her for anything else. It isn’t difficult to imagine her sinking a knife in between Caspar’s ribs, or slicing into his throat and letting him bleed out where no one will find him. “Four years ago,” he grinds out, “you… you were the one…”

“Four years ago?” She lifts a finger up to her cheek in mock contemplation. “Ooh, that hair… don’t tell me you were Solon’s pet from back then! Yeah, I remember keepin’ an eye on your little blue friend. He was _such_ a dear, took everything in me not to kill him right then and there!”

Behind them, Caspar freezes in place. Linhardt can feel the magic inside him, placing a face to the name that’s plagued him all these years.

Kronya seems to take their silence as some kind of confirmation, because her grin widens to a disproportionate size. “Don’t you just love it? When you kill someone and you get to see how much they struggle and flail like fishes washed up on shore? All that blood, all that _fear_ in their eyes!” She turns her gaze back to Byleth, who looks torn between looking at Linhardt and at Kronya. “That man… he was your daddy, wasn’t he? How was watching him die in your arms? It sounds so sad, I could just cry!”

She moves so fast, there’s no time for any of them to react—by the time Linhardt realizes she’s escaped, Kronya’s already out of sight and probably racing out of the forest altogether. Byleth snaps out the harshest curse Linhardt’s ever heard from him, but Edelgard grabs onto his arm before he can give chase. “Professor, please! This can’t be anything but a trap!” she exclaims, every bit of concern on her face genuine. “At least let us help. Hubert, did you…?”

Hubert nods, and only now does Linhardt notice the thin, near-invisible purple line of miasma, starting from his index finger and leading deeper into the woods. “Tracking magic,” he explains when Byleth gives him a curious look. “We must approach with caution. That woman must have a number of cards up her sleeve if we are dealing with her kind.”

“Her kind?” Linhardt blurts out. “Do you mean the Agarthans?”

Something remarkably similar to surprise flashes in Hubert’s eye. Edelgard and Byleth are moving up ahead, following the trail of miasma, but Linhardt can’t bring himself to follow just yet. He can’t see any of the other three who know about this—Yuri, Byleth, and Caspar—speaking to Hubert about a topic they’d all agreed to keep secret. “Do you know something about them, Hubert?” Linhardt presses. “You’re a dark mage as well… are you connected to them somehow?”

He had never questioned Hubert’s magic—it seemed natural for someone like him to be interested in it more than reason or faith, after all. But now that Linhardt thinks about it, Lysithea is the only other student here who can cast dark magic, and she had been involved with the Agarthans as well. Something must have happened to Hapi in the past as well, if her connection to Demonic Beasts is any evidence. Which means Hubert…

“Lin?” Caspar prods. “We should go too. Professor and Edelgard are strong, but if that Kronya has backup like last time…”

Hubert nods, once. “We will speak later, if you so wish,” he says. There’s a quality to his voice that Linhardt can’t remember ever hearing any other time, and he wonders if that’s supposed to be Hubert’s way of saying this is the promise of a conversation. “Let us go.”

They follow the tracking magic to a clearing in the forest, but the situation before them is so strange that it takes Linhardt a long moment to even process what he’s seeing: Kronya looks very much incapacitated, considering an arm has been shoved into her chest, but Byleth and Edelgard are on the other side of the clearing. No, the other person is—

“Him!” Caspar gasps. “It’s that old man again, the fake librarian! Dang, I wish I’d cut off his arms now!”

He makes as if to charge, but both Linhardt and Hubert throw their arms in front of Caspar before he can run in. “Don’t,” Linhardt whispers. He pretends his hands aren’t shaking as hard as they are. “Something… Something’s strange.” If he thinks hard enough… had there been a spell involving the human heart in one of those tomes in the Shadow Library…?

Hubert scowls. “It can’t be… No, we can’t let him do this.”

“Is it dark magic?” Linhardt swallows when dark flames suddenly erupt from Kronya’s still-struggling body—there’s no smoke, but somehow he can smell it in the air anyway. “Definitely dark magic. Hubert, let’s—”

“There’s no wrestling control of that spell. Try and the magic will only consume you.” Hubert shakes his head; then, louder than he’s ever raised his voice before, “Lady Edelgard! Professor! Get out of the way, now!”

Edelgard turns to look at him, confusion written all over her face—Linhardt can understand, he probably looks the exact same right now—but then the black flames rise all around them like four pillars of fire, and then Byleth is shoving Edelgard to the side and out of the clearing, hard enough that she nearly rolls into a tree. Hubert rushes over to catch her, and both Caspar and Linhardt start to grab Byleth out of the flames as well, but they’re too slow, too late, and—

“No— _Byleth!_ ” Linhardt shouts, scrabbling forward, but when the flames disappear Byleth is not there, leaving only Kronya’s corpse on the ground and Solon, laughing, magic circling his palms.

He’s—no. No, Byleth can’t be gone, can he? He can’t just be gone, as easily as that—

“ _Professor!_ ” someone shouts, and it takes Linhardt a moment to realize it had been Caspar. “Where did he—you! What—What’d you do to our professor! Where is he? Give him back!”

“Caspar.” It’s Hubert, and the gloved hand he places on Caspar’s shoulder is trembling just slightly. “Calm down—”

With a snarl, Caspar brushes his hand away and steps closer towards the still-grinning Solon. “I’m not _calming down!_ Where did he go? Give him back— _give him back!_ ”

Linhardt grabs Caspar’s wrist and pulls him back, just in time to avoid a stray black flame from Solon’s hand. “Caspar, _stay away_ from him,” Linhardt hisses, wrapping his arms around Caspar’s chest in a desperate attempt to restrain him, though for how long Linhardt can keep him in place he can’t say. “It’s dangerous, just—stay back—”

“Lin, he—our professor! He’s—He’s—” Caspar’s grip on his arm is painfully tight, enough that Linhardt’s sure he’s going to leave bruises. “It’s like—what he did to you—”

_What he did… to me?_

“Solon, what have you done?” Edelgard demands. Around them, Linhardt can see the other groups of students emerging from the trees, probably drawn to the loud voices and the black fire from earlier. “That… Was that even really dark magic?”

“Oh, forgive me for not clarifying it earlier,” Solon croons. Linhardt feels chills run down the entire length of his spine. “That was the Forbidden Spell of Zahras, children. It brought your professor to a world separate from ours, that of the unending darkness of the void…”

“That… That can’t be true.” Edelgard swallows. “He cannot be dead. Our professor is stronger than that—”

“Perhaps he is not dead yet. Who can say? If a man dies without anyone around to witness it, does he truly die at all?”

“That’s it.” Caspar pries Linhardt’s arms off of him and takes off at a run across the field, too fast for Linhardt to even try chasing after. “Hey, you! You’re gonna regret doing this!”

But Solon doesn’t even blink at him—if anything, his grin only grows wider. “Why, I remember you from back then. It seems you haven’t changed at all.” He raises his arm, and dark magic comes out screeching, the banshee’s mouth gaping wide enough to swallow Caspar whole—

“ _No—_ ” Linhardt stumbles forward, wrenching control of the magic just long enough for the banshee to shrivel up and transform into a shower of dried leaves that flutter harmlessly to the ground. Caspar hadn’t faltered when the banshee had burst out, like he’d known he’d be fine, somehow, and his axe comes down hard on Solon’s unguarded shoulder once more. Blood so dark it looks black spurts out, and Solon curses in pain before snapping his fingers and disappearing in a flurry of violet dust.

“He’s not gone,” Hubert immediately says. His fingertips are glowing faintly with dark magic—he must be able to feel Solon’s presence still nearby.

Linhardt runs forward and grabs onto Caspar again before he can move anywhere else. “Caspar, _please!_ You can’t just rush in whenever you want—”

“Why don’t _you_ care more, Lin!?” Caspar shouts, whirling around to face him. Linhardt startles back—there’s anger on Caspar’s face, but it’s not directed at him. “He—He took the professor away! Don’t you like Professor Byleth? Are you just going to let that man get away with it? We have to do something before—before it’s too late and we can’t g-get him back again!”

Linhardt hadn’t imagined the crack in Caspar’s voice near the end, and the thunderclap of realization hits him so hard he nearly trips and falls. Is this how Caspar had felt, four years ago when Linhardt had left him alone in the forest? Is this how Caspar had felt for over a week when Linhardt hadn’t returned and none of them could find him, could figure out what happened to him?

Linhardt had only ever noticed what had the incident had changed about himself—he had never thought about how it might have changed Caspar, too.

“There!” someone shouts—Ferdinand, Dorothea, and Ashe’s group near the edge of the clearing step back when Solon reappears in a flash of the same violet dust as earlier. But he’s too fast—Ferdinand blocks the mire Solon sends splashing out with his lance, rendering his weapon a melted mess, but Dorothea’s spell and Ashe’s arrow don’t reach him before he’s Warping away again. Even worse, more enemy soldiers are starting to emerge from the forest as well, making it even more confusing to see where Solon is teleporting to.

Caspar scowls, readying his axe again when he locks eyes with an opponent. “We’ll never catch him like this! Can’t we do anything?”

Linhardt looks up at the same time Hubert does, and their eyes meet for a few tense seconds. Then Hubert turns around and makes a grabbing and tugging motion with his hand—Solon materializes in the direction Hubert had faced, staying long enough to fire another Banshee spell Linhardt hurriedly morphs into a flurry of bird feathers instead before immediately disappearing once again. “I can locate him, but I cannot keep him long,” Hubert says, giving Linhardt a meaningful look. “Lysithea is not here yet. You are the only other one capable of wielding dark magic here.”

“I…” How did it come down to this? Linhardt looks around him—at Caspar now facing off against a wave of nearby soldiers with Edelgard, their axes swinging and flashing in the light together—at where Solon appears, fires spells at unsuspecting classmates, and disappears again—at the blackened spot on the ground where Byleth had been standing right before he had disappeared.

Linhardt bites down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. “I suppose I have no choice.”

He remembers what Byleth had told him, before: when he had summoned Jormungand, in that future only Byleth had seen, the wounds that had opened up on Linhardt’s hands refused to stop bleeding. A slow and painful death may be the end waiting for Linhardt after three years, after everything he’s done and everyone he’s killed, but right now he still has to live—he can’t die just yet. If he wants to use this spell without injuring himself…

Hubert’s eyes narrow. “Now,” is all the warning he gives before flinging his arms out to another direction, this one almost directly behind Linhardt.

Linhardt whirls around, calls on the snake resting within him—but this time he tells himself that Caspar is fine, and Caspar is alright, and he has to do his best here and now to make sure that stays the same. The magic twirls in his palm, and when it leaves his hand it does so quick and sharp, but no cuts open up and no blood falls. The world serpent snaps out towards Solon like a whip, coiling around his body in an instant and squeezing him in place.

Somehow this spell takes more out of him than the last time he had used it—Linhardt buckles to his knees, his ears ringing and his head throbbing in pain. “Lin!” Caspar shouts, but all that serves to do is make his head hurt worse. “You—What happened? Where are you hurt?”

Linhardt shakes his head, doing his best to ignore the ache. “Hurry and get him,” he urges instead. This is Solon trying to wrestle control of Jormungand away from him, Linhardt belatedly realizes—this is their wills clashing together, and if Linhardt resists for too long, he’s certain his skull is going to split open. When Caspar hesitates, still looking down at him in worry, Linhardt bites out, “ _Hurry!_ ”

“I’ll be back,” Caspar promises, before standing back up and running towards the trapped Solon together with Edelgard again. Yet even if Solon can’t move, one of his arms is free enough to cast magic their way—Linhardt watches in fear as a plethora of spells fly from his hands, many of them he can barely even recognize. Caspar swats away the banshee and Edelgard ducks beneath a flurry of shadows that may have been the Death spell, but the cloud of miasma knocks her off her feet and Caspar trips over the mire that wraps around his ankles. _No, no, no_ —if Linhardt didn’t have to both keep this spell up and fight off Solon’s mental attack, he could do something, could _help,_ but it’s taking everything in him just to do both of those things—

Jormungand hisses, baring its fangs. In a last-ditch attempt to help Linhardt flicks his wrist and sends the snake coming down to close its jaws around Solon’s head, but a sharp stab of pain through his head has him reeling backwards, and the serpent retreats as well, writhing in the air. “Fools!” Solon rasps. “Why bother fighting? The professor you so cherish is already gone! There is nothing that can escape the darkness of Zahras’ spell!”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Caspar yells, loud enough that his voice seems to reach halfway across the field. Linhardt pushes himself up weakly, barely aware he had even fallen on the grass. “He’s not dead! He’s not dead until I know he is! So shut up and give him back already! I won’t—I won’t let anyone be taken away from me again!”

“Cas—” Fear lances through Linhardt’s chest. “Cas, _no—_ ”

But his own voice is barely louder than a cough, and Caspar is picking up his axe again, running despite the burnt skin around his ankles, running despite Solon’s magic heading straight for him and no, _no,_ it can’t be like this, Linhardt can’t just sit here, he has to do something, he has to _help—_

Everything seems to slow down, for one long moment. Linhardt can see it, the exact angle Caspar raises his axe, the shadows of the Death spell inches away from his chest—and then a blinding white light obscures everything from view.

Linhardt scrambles backwards, shielding his eyes with his arm—when he cracks his eyes open it’s to just barely make out something flapping in the sudden wind, and for a delusional second he thinks they might be the wings of a great black eagle, spread wide and ready for flight. When he blinks again the image of the wings are replaced by a familiar, tattered black coat instead, and the golden shimmer of the Creator Sword beside it.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, numbly, _I knew he’d be fine._

Both Linhardt’s and Solon’s dark magic had dissipated into nothing at the light, but it doesn’t matter—Solon is lying limp at Byleth’s feet, his blood pooling beneath him at a large gash down his torso. Byleth must have appeared from mid-air to be able to strike so quickly and suddenly. “Y-You… Professor?” Caspar says, blinking and rubbing his eyes. “Wait, is that really you?”

Byleth nods, once. “You did well,” he says, placing a hand on Caspar’s head to ruffle his hair.

The light fades just in time for Linhardt to see Solon’s twitching body on the bloodstained grass. “To think…” he coughs. “I would… lose to mere beasts.”

“Shut _up,_ ” Caspar growls. He raises his axe for a clear finishing blow, but pauses when Byleth touches his wrist and gently nudges for him to lower his arms. “Huh? What— _oh!_ Linhardt!”

Linhardt blinks. The light from earlier has faded, but there are still spots in his vision. “M… Me?”

Solon lifts his gaze, and Linhardt flinches back involuntarily—four years and he still hasn’t stopped fearing those black eyes. “Ah… the little weapon,” he chuckles hoarsely. “How long has it been? Everyday, I… I regret not having been able to keep you with us.”

Familiar anger flares up at his words, but Linhardt swallows and tamps the fire down before it serves as a catalyst for his magic. With difficulty he pushes himself up off the ground and takes one unsteady step forward, and another, and another, until he’s standing before Solon’s body. “You know I will never forgive you or your kind for what you did to me,” Linhardt says, lowly. “For what you did to all of us.”

“Fool… you should be thanking us instead.” Solon stares up at him. Blood leaks from one of his eyes. “We gave you powers beyond your imagination. Combining the Crest of Cethleann with the Crest of Macuil was an experiment my superiors told me were doomed to fail, but you are living proof that it was a success.”

“I am not just an _experiment,_ ” Linhardt snarls. “None of us are. It was not your place to drag us away from our lives for your own sick satisfaction! And—And when you were tired of us, you simply threw us away without care for what you did to us? You never even told me about how I will be lucky to live past twenty years of age!”

Solon is silent for a moment, staring up at Linhardt as if in shock, before he chokes on a laugh. Yet more black blood, reminiscent of mire, drips down the corners of his mouth. “Is that so? Who told you that, you foolish child?”

“W… What?”

“Did you never think about _why_ —” He coughs. “Why we chose you, specifically, after failing with the von Ordelia girl? Because you bear Cethleann’s Crest—a Crest that can, when pushed, heal its bearer. Do you not understand?” Solon sneers, a horrifying thing on his wrinkled, bloodied skin. “We care not for a short-lived weapon. But one that can bring itself out of the brink of death through one Crest while strengthening itself with the other? There is nothing more valuable in this war.”

Linhardt stares down hard at the man before him, enough that his eyes begin to sting from the still-surrounding miasma. Around them, the sounds of fighting are beginning to dwindle as more of the enemy soldiers are cut down and defeated, and for one delirious moment Linhardt wonders if, in another life, he would have been one of them—if, in another life, he had never escaped that basement, had stayed with the Agarthans, had grown into one of them, paper-white skin and blackened eyes and mire in place of blood.

“Is there a way to remove the Crest?” Linhardt asks, softly.

Solon grunts. “Why would you wish for that?”

It hadn’t been a no. Linhardt calls on Jormungand again, but this time he focuses its power, condenses it into a smaller vessel, and the thin line that slithers out of his palm is but a ghost of a snake. It wraps around Solon’s throat and sinks its fangs into the back of his neck.

“A painless death,” Byleth remarks, his voice devoid of emotion. “Personally nothing he said had merited such.”

“No,” Linhardt agrees. “But I am not like them.”

He still remembers that seething hatred within him, the need to rip Solon limb from limb, to crush his ribs with Jormungand’s coils and squeeze both the answers Linhardt needs and the very life out of his broken body before finally leaving his death in the hands of a swarm of nearby insects. Why? What had brought that on, when once just the very sight of blood had made him sick to his stomach?

“Lin?” It’s Caspar, beside him, touching his arm. “You’re okay? I, uh… Sorry for rushing in there. That _was_ stupid, huh…” He rubs the back of his head with a small, sheepish grin that doesn’t quite hide the concern on his face. “You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

Perhaps it’s Macuil’s Crest within him, its combat-oriented properties so different from that of Cethleann’s. Perhaps it’s the dark magic, addling his mind, changing his very nature. Perhaps it had been nothing but himself, and Linhardt thinks, as he looks down at Caspar, that might be the most likely answer.

“I’m fine.” Linhardt places a hand over a cut on Caspar’s shoulder. He sees it close up, then feels it reappear elsewhere on his own body when he casts a Heal spell. “Thank you.”

“Uh. For what?”

“Everything.” Linhardt closes his eyes, sighs. “Everything, Caspar.”

Byleth looks between the both of them, his expression distinctly uncomfortable, and Caspar stammers out, “H-Haha—whoa, you’re not usually like this, Lin—I mean, well, i-it’s nice, but—okay! I-I’m glad you’re okay! How about you, Professor? You just came out of nowhere like that, and now you’re… wait a minute.” He frowns. “Since when did you have green hair?”

“Green… hair?” Byleth repeats. He reaches up and touches his hair, and Linhardt follows the motion. He hadn’t realized it right away, but Byleth’s hair _has_ changed color, along with his eyes—instead of the dark blue Linhardt’s come to take relief in seeing on the battlefield, they’re now a bright mint green reminiscent of Flayn’s or Archbishop Rhea’s. “Oh, so it is green,” he mutters, numbly. “Well, this is a bit…”

Linhardt stares at him. For a moment alarm sneaks its way into his heart, sending it thumping at a rapid pace—the last time Linhardt’s hair had dramatically changed color, it hadn’t spelled any good news at all. But… “Solon said you were in a… world of eternal darkness or something,” he says, slowly. “How did you escape?”

He has his suspicions, of course, but he still feels a pang of sympathy when Byleth’s face falls and he looks up sharply, as if perhaps looking for someone beside him, only to sigh and look back down at his hands. “It was her,” he murmurs, low enough that only Linhardt hears. “She gave me her power, but…”

“She isn’t here anymore.”

Byleth nods, and Linhardt steps forward unsurely. Caspar looks unsure, but doesn’t interfere, rather surprisingly. “I’m sorry,” Linhardt offers, softly. Byleth had just lost his father, and now the Goddess he had seemed such close friends with, too. “I’m glad you’re alright, at the very least.”

“Um… I’m sorry, too, Professor,” Caspar adds, clearly confused but obviously having understood the general gist anyway. “For whoever it was you lost… um, we should head back to the monastery, don’t you think? It looks like we’ve all got injuries from the enemy soldiers. And if we take too long, I bet Archbishop Rhea’s gonna come after all of us!”

Byleth flinches at the thought, and Linhardt can’t blame him—one look at his appearance and Rhea is undoubtedly going to hound him down.

But Linhardt will leave him to that. He turns around, catching sight of Hubert and Edelgard speaking darkly with one another to the side of the clearing, and feels his eyes narrow of their own accord—he has his own hounding down to do right after this.

Much to Linhardt’s dismay, Byleth wobbles and collapses on the walk back to the monastery, and in the ensuing chaos he loses sight of Edelgard and Hubert. Even worse, Rhea insists on taking Byleth in to rest in her own room rather than in the infirmary, and though Linhardt later finds out from Flayn that Rhea hadn’t done much aside from sing to him or… whatever, he hasn’t been able to shake off the uneasy feeling since then.

That night, it rains. Linhardt curls up in bed, idly tugging at a loose thread on his pillow, and stares at the wall. Solon is dead and gone, and so is Kronya—it almost feels like his childhood ghosts have left him forever, finally ascended to the afterlife. So why does it feel like something still haunts him, lurking, waiting for its chance to strike?

Thunder booms outside. Linhardt shifts, pulling his blanket to tuck under his chin. Maybe it’s the magic inside him, stirring restlessly. Maybe it’s his Crest, but then at some point Linhardt’s stopped being able to differentiate the two different energies inside him anymore.

He sighs. There’s no point thinking about this any longer—he has to look for Edelgard and Hubert tomorrow, and maybe see if Byleth is doing alright—

_Thump. Thump._

Linhardt frowns. _Those sounds…_ footfalls? They aren’t rare at this time of night, when he knows other students have sleepovers or just like visiting each other for… whatever reason, but the rain is coming down hard tonight. Surely they can reschedule that sleepover for—oh, wait a minute. He’s an idiot.

He waves a lazy hand, and a slip of mire unlocks his door just in time for Caspar to come bursting through. “Whoa—h-hey, Lin! Didn’t, uh, didn’t expect to see you here!” Caspar laughs, voice a little too loud as he fumbles to close the door behind him, right before thunder crashes once more. Caspar jolts, clutching the doorknob so hard Linhardt fears he’ll snap it right off. “Uh… so… uh…”

“How do you not expect to see me here? This is my room,” Linhardt points out, though he’s already moving to make space on the bed. “Oh, well, you’re already here, so you may as well get on with it.”

Caspar laughs again, this time loud enough Linhardt’s sure his unfortunate neighbors are suspecting a banshee in the walls. “I-I have no idea what you’re—”

Lightning flashes outside, followed by a telltale _boom._

Linhardt blinks and Caspar is already in bed beside him, shaking under the covers but clearly trying not to. “Caspar,” Linhardt sighs, gently pulling the blankets off his face, “it’s fine. I’m here. There’s no point trying to pretend you’re not scared—”

“I-I’m _not_ scared!” Caspar insists hotly, as he does each and every time this happens. Linhardt wonders why he even tries. “It’s just—I just—I-I thought _you_ might be scared, Lin, ‘cause, y’know, uh… thunder…” He seems to struggle for words for another second, before giving up and shaking his head. “Never mind! Can you just lie down too now, please?”

Oh, well, it’s not like Linhardt can say no to that. He helps Caspar shift so that both their heads fit on the pillow before Linhardt pulls the covers over the both of them. His eyes have grown accustomed enough to the darkness that he can make out Caspar’s face, sky-blue eyes wide and frightened. “I’ve always wondered,” Linhardt murmurs. “Why _are_ you scared of thunder?”

Caspar looks like he means to argue that he isn’t scared at all, but sighs and looks away. “I thought you knew. It was, um… When we were younger… I don’t remember why, but I think we were playing together and then… suddenly I just heard this really loud boom. Of thunder, obviously.” He swallows. “But it wasn’t from a thunderstorm. The sky was clear and all, not a cloud. It just came out of nowhere. And I got really—I was _surprised,_ alright, totally taken off-guard, and I guess my younger self freaked out and worried thunder would come down again but this time on me, or on you, or…” He shrugs, miserably. “You get it.”

A mysterious crack of thunder? Linhardt would be lying if he said he doesn’t know exactly where—or who, rather—that may have come from. He is going to have some words with Father and responsible spell-casting once they get out of here. “I see,” he says. “Well, I hardly think you need to worry about something like that happening. I didn’t learn Thunder magic for a reason, you know.” Never mind the fact that he wouldn’t even be able to cast it now.

“I mean, _I guess,_ but you can’t ever be sure!” Caspar groans and buries his face against Linhardt’s chest, the movement so sudden that Linhardt doesn’t even notice it until he feels Caspar’s warmth tucked beneath his neck. “Whatever. This is lame. And now I’m wide awake, so I got no choice but to wait this storm out.”

As if on cue, thunder rumbles overhead once more, and Caspar’s grip on Linhardt’s sleeve tightens. Linhardt sighs again—he doesn’t expect to get to sleep like this either, especially if Caspar still squirms as much as he does in his sleep as he used to when they were younger. “Would you like to me to stay up with you?”

Caspar’s eyes widen. “You’re not sleepy?”

“Not anymore, no.” Linhardt casts around for some random conversation topic. He’s not good at small talk on a regular day, but he’s smart enough to know the weather is definitely not a choice right now. “Whenever you run out of your room to come down to mine, do you ever see anyone else?” he manages. “I was just thinking about who else might have been the footsteps outside my room before I realized it was you.”

“Oh! Uh, well…” Caspar mulls it over for a bit. “Well, Hubert for sure. Apparently dark magic is stronger at night, so he likes to train for a few hours in the evening. He really is like those blood-sucking monsters you showed me in that book. And, um… Bernadetta! She’s more comfy when there aren’t any other people around. Oh, and _definitely_ Sylvain. That guy’s always heading off somewhere or other at night.”

Linhardt had already been aware of the first two, considering they’re his classmates too, but the last one has him raising his eyebrows. “Sylvain? What, does he have secret little trysts in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah!” Caspar hastily lowers his voice and continues. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird? Why not just meet up during the day? I bet you wouldn’t even be able to see the other person’s face if you met up at night.”

“Well, that’s… I think there’s a certain sort of… romance when you meet up at night,” Linhardt says, though even he doesn’t quite believe his own words. There’s nothing _less_ romantic about having to stay up late for the person you like. This situation with Caspar doesn’t count. “And I suppose there are more things you could do, too. Things you wouldn’t want Professor Seteth to catch you in the middle of…”

Caspar flushes to the roots of his hair, visible even in the dark. “L-Lin! You can’t be thinking of… _that,_ can you?”

“Why so embarrassed? We’ll be turning 18 this year, it’s perfectly normal.” Linhardt can’t tamp down the growing heat in his cheeks either, though. “Actually, don’t you have an eye on anyone right now? We’ve met quite a number of people here already, surely you’re interested in _someone._ ”

Caspar gets even redder, which Linhardt hadn’t thought was possible. “What? No! Of course not! No way!”

“Really? Not even Ashe? You’re always with hi—”

“ _No!_ Lin, come on, this is embarrassing!”

“As I said, perfectly normal,” Linhardt repeats. It’s oddly fun seeing Caspar so flustered like this. Perhaps this is why Dorothea and Flayn are always trying to extract gossip from them whenever they get the chance. “So you really aren’t particularly fond of anyone? What a bore.”

Caspar harrumphs. “There are more important things to worry about than… than that! What about _you,_ Linhardt?”

“What, me? Do I look interested in anyone to you?”

“Um, _yeah!_ The professor! And I already told you, it’s _immoral,_ so don’t even think about it!”

Linhardt can’t help an amused little smile. “I’ll admit he’s nice on the eyes, but I’m not _interested_ in Byleth. That’s rather like saying I’m interested in Edelgard.”

Caspar blinks. “You’d never.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh. Oh, well, I guess that makes sense…” Caspar sighs. He seems to have completely forgotten about the thunderstorm now, something Linhardt only further notices when thunder rumbles again and Caspar doesn’t even notice. “But then this means neither of us had done _it_ yet!”

Linhardt closes his eyes for a moment and briefly hopes Caspar doesn’t notice the red on his face. “Of course not. With whom would I have even… don’t answer that.”

Caspar laughs. “I heard our first time is supposed to be really important though! That you should give it away to someone you won’t regret!”

“Must we _really_ talk about this?”

“Now _you’re_ the one getting embarrassed, Lin?” Caspar jabs. Linhardt makes a little _che_ noise. “I know Sylvain talks about way more than just kissing, though. Might be why I kinda don’t like talking to him…”

“Wait.” Linhardt frowns. “Kissing?”

“Yeah? Like, your first kiss and all?” Caspar looks perfectly clueless. “That’s why I was thinking, if you tried kissing someone at night, wouldn’t you maybe… miss? What if you end up poking their eye out instead? Just find some hiding spot and go there in the day!”

Linhardt once again has to take a few deep breaths before he can speak again. “Right. Yes, of course. Kissing.” He’s never been overly fond of the concept before, despite the few times he’s read of the main characters in fiction books having their big kiss at the end of the novel, though that may have just been because the romance itself was trite and contrived. Kissing has just always seemed like a messy, sloppy affair that Linhardt has never, for the life of him, been able to see the appeal of. Would it truly feel good if it were with someone he liked? He tries imagining kissing Byleth, but his very mind recoils from the thought as if repulsed. He tries imagining kissing Caspar, and…

His mind draws a blank. Linhardt wouldn’t be _averse_ to it, he realizes. Perhaps if he was really, truly curious and had nothing better to do.

“So you really have never kissed anyone before either, huh?” Caspar’s saying. Linhardt hurries to tune him back in before his train of thought becomes obvious; for some reason, he’d really rather not have Caspar knowing about that. “What if we end up never kissing _anyone?_ That’d seriously suck. Or what if we end up giving away our first kiss to someone awful? That’s even worse!”

“It doesn’t sound that important,” Linhardt offers. How did their conversation get like this, again? He blames the thunderstorm still roaring away above them.

Caspar pouts. “It’s still a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing! What if you gave your first kiss away to someone you really hate? Like… um… I don’t know. Hubert?”

Linhardt can’t say he _really hates_ Hubert, but he very much would rather avoid kissing him. He must have made some sort of expression on his face, because Caspar laughs again, loud and definitely audible to their next-door neighbors, but Linhardt quite likes this Caspar more than the Caspar that had been shaking under his blanket just earlier. “I suppose the only solution is to give this first kiss away to someone decent and get it over with, then,” Linhardt muses aloud.

“Whoa,” Caspar mumbles, sounding deep in thought. “It sounds callous when you put it that way, but it also kind of makes sense…”

In the silence that follows Linhardt yawns, shifting to make himself more comfortable on the bed—such extended conversation when the day had already been long and tiring enough is completely draining him of energy now. Thankfully it sounds like the storm is lightening up a little, so hopefully Caspar will drift off to sleep soon too. Linhardt can’t possibly stay up _all_ night for him, even if he may want to…

“I got it!” Caspar exclaims. “Can I kiss you, Lin?”

Linhardt is immediately dragged back to wakefulness. “I’m sorry. _What?_ ”

“You said it yourself—better just get it over with, right? And we’re best friends, so at least I know I definitely won’t regret it!”

For some reason, disappointment flashes in Linhardt’s chest at his words. It seems to be thinking, _What, just that? That you wouldn’t regret it?_ But he pushes the inexplicable feeling away to ponder over some other time and clears his throat. “Caspar, you… do realize people who kiss each other also usually _like_ each other, don’t they?”

Caspar looks confused. “I like you.”

“In a _romantic_ way.”

“Oh. Well… does it really matter?” Caspar moves to sit up, and Linhardt sighs—now he just knows there’s no way he’s going to change Caspar’s mind now. “Come on! I mean, you gotta be curious about how it feels like too, right? And we’ll both probably find someone better to kiss in the future anyway, so this won’t have any hard feelings!”

“Hmm…” Despite himself, Linhardt’s already pushing himself to sit up as well, through no small effort. Just this already has him yawning again already. “I’m still not sure this will alleviate your concerns, but if you insist. Can we please not do tongue, though? It just sounds far too messy for my liking.”

“Okay, sure!”

Linhardt sits cross-legged beside Caspar, the bed creaking under their combined weight. For a while, they do nothing but stare at each other, the rain pattering above them, until finally Linhardt grows impatient and asks, “Well? Aren’t you going to move?”

“Oh!” Caspar looks embarrassed. “I, uh, thought _you_ were going to move first. You know… at your pace and all.”

“You’re the one who suggested it.”

“Yeah, but—” Caspar chooses _now_ to blush. “I mean, if you don’t want to… I shouldn’t force you, Lin…”

Linhardt sighs. This night has only grown stranger and stranger with each passing minute. “Caspar, I would have told you by now if I truly didn’t want to. I suppose I am a _bit_ curious as to how it feels like,” he allows, just to see Caspar brighten a little, “so this isn’t just something I’m indulging you in. Now will you carry on? Any longer and I will simply collapse.”

“We can’t have that! Lin, when you end up kissing someone better, promise me you won’t fall asleep in the middle of it. I might suffer the worst kind of secondhand embarrassment.”

“Why would you… oh, fine, I promise. Ready now?”

Caspar’s expression changes into one of determination, as if he’s preparing himself to step out onto the battlefield. Linhardt can’t say he hadn’t been expecting that. “Alright. Close your eyes.”

Linhardt wants to point out there really wouldn’t be a point, because it’s not as if they’re kissing for _real,_ and anyway, it’s the middle of the night, Linhardt can barely see anything as is, but that is a lot of words and a lot of effort for probably zero gain, so he just gives in and closes his eyes as instructed. There’s a pause, where Linhardt wonders if Caspar is considering backing out of this again, before suddenly there’s a warm pressure against his lips.

Oh. They’re Caspar’s lips.

They’re damp and bitten warm. For another second neither of them move once more, as if unsure of what to do now that they’ve pressed their mouths together, and Linhardt has to admit he has no idea what comes after that first step either. Still, he should do _something,_ shouldn’t he? Perhaps… He lifts his arms up and awkwardly cups Caspar’s cheeks in his hands, because it seems like the natural thing to do, and Caspar makes a little pleased sound.

Something starts thumping, rhythmically, in Linhardt’s ears, loud as the crash of thunder. He likes that sound. He would quite like to hear it again.

He doesn’t get the chance to do so, though, because before he knows it Caspar is already drawing back until they’re a reasonable distance from each other again. “Huh, that wasn’t so bad,” Caspar notes aloud, like all five seconds of that was just a vaguely interesting event. Linhardt, on the other hand, feels more dazed than he can remember ever having felt. “What do you think, Lin?”

“What?” he croaks out, pathetically.

“What did it feel like for you?” Caspar presses. He’s already lying back down on the bed, and Linhardt automatically follows, though his body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him anymore.

“It… was fine,” Linhardt eventually manages. The rapid _th-thump_ of his heartbeat still hasn’t calmed down, and he wonders if it ever will again after this. “It felt fine for you? Why did you end it so quickly then?”

Caspar looks nonplussed. “Sheesh, aren’t you the one who said kisses are messy and gross? Anyway, now that our first kiss is over and done with, you can go around finding other people to experiment-kiss anyway! If you want to, that is. I don’t think I’d recommend Hubert, you might get poisoned.”

“I’m not about to experiment—” Linhardt shakes his head. “Never mind. Thank you for valiantly sacrificing yourself and helping me with the dreaded first kiss then, Caspar.”

“Hehe! No problem! It’s what best friends are for!”

But even after Caspar falls asleep half-sprawled out atop Linhardt, Linhardt himself can’t even close his eyes, earlier drowsiness completely forgotten. No, all his mind seems capable of focusing on is the memory of that warmth, of that little noise Caspar had made, of how it had made the magic inside Linhardt jump and twirl in what may have been delight or something else entirely. Hesitantly he lifts one arm and drapes it atop Caspar’s chest, a little like hugging a pillow at night, and Caspar mumbles something unintelligible but doesn’t push him off.

 _This is what best friends are for?_ Linhardt thinks to himself. True, he doesn’t have many friends, Caspar had been one of his only links to the outside world for most of the years before entering the Officers Academy, and his social manners are all but nonexistent.

But he is fairly sure that best friends do not kiss each other, and he is fairly, considerably, _definitely_ sure even a friendly kiss should not make Linhardt feel like his body is about to set itself on fire.

Thankfully, Linhardt manages to drift off at some point in the night, although it’s one of his most restless sleeps in a while, and when he wakes up it’s to Caspar poking his cheeks and coaxing him out of bed with a plate of fresh sweet buns. Afterwards, their classes are handled by the other professors again—it looks like Archbishop Rhea is certainly keeping Byleth busy—and though Linhardt tries to approach either Edelgard or Hubert at every opportunity, they always somehow manage to slip away from him without his noticing.

It’s a pain and a disappointment, but after a few days of this, Linhardt wonders if he should just stop trying—it’s clear they have no intentions of revealing their secrets to him, whatever they may be, and it might be easier to find out more about them by pretending he’s given up. Would they really fall for it, though? Linhardt’s not the best at acting. Still, he supposes it’s worth a try, and he still has a few months to go before the school year ends. Surely enough time to uncover some information from them.

He is proven very, terribly, extremely wrong when he comes face to face with Edelgard down in the Holy Tomb. The words, “In fact, I gave the order. _I_ am the Flame Emperor,” don’t sound real until the Imperial army begins to advance.

Caspar curses and grabs Linhardt, tugging him away from the point of a lance. “Hey, what the hell’s going on here!?” he shouts. “Edelgard, come on! This can’t be right!”

But by then his words are already drowned out by the sounds of battle—Byleth signals for them to close their ranks, and the Eagles all come closer, tightening their formation around each other with Archbishop Rhea in the center. _As if she even needs protecting,_ some dark voice in the corner of Linhardt’s thoughts mutters.

Somehow it’s that single snark remark that snaps him back to reality. “What… What’s going on?” he asks, letting Caspar push him to stand behind him and inside the circle. “We’re not fighting… Edelgard, are we? Or Hubert? This can’t… This isn’t…”

“I-It is alright, Linhardt! Just focus!” Flayn cries. She’s inside the circle as well, already casting healing and barrier spells around them to minimize the damage dealt to both sides. “I’m sure this… this is all a misunderstanding! After this, we will surely speak with Edelgard and… and things will clear themselves up!”

It’s the frantic desperation, the rigid refusal to believe otherwise, that steels Linhardt into throwing a Miasma spell out towards an incoming group of soldiers—not deadly enough to kill, but strong enough to incapacitate them. Edelgard is someone who does everything firmly and decisively—she would not set upon the Imperial army upon them for no good reason, and certainly not because of a _misunderstanding._ No, Linhardt had known from the very beginning what exactly is going on here; he simply hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that.

He looks up ahead and sees Edelgard already standing at the other end of the Holy Tomb. He thinks of her lecturing him, scolding him for his irresponsibility and missing homework. He thinks of her always finishing these tangents off with an offer to help him with a difficult subject, or a genuinely concerned inquiry on what he’s having trouble with.

“Professor,” Linhardt manages, over the din of battle. He hadn’t bothered to raise his voice, but Byleth turns to look at him all the same, accustomed to picking out the smallest of sounds in a fight. “What do we do?”

The Creator Sword snaps out, slamming two soldiers back against a wall at once. “That’s the question,” Byleth mumbles, nearly inaudible.

Linhardt isn’t sure how long they fight like that, but it can’t be too long because he’s only starting to feel tired, to breathe harder, when it comes to a stop—the army general from earlier is at their feet, slain by Byleth’s Creator Sword and a flurry of Petra’s arrows. Rhea steps forward and out of the circle, her palms sizzling with fire magic. “You wretched child,” she snarls, sounding strangely inhuman for a moment. “To think a descendant of House Hresvelg would dare turn against the Church…”

Edelgard steps back with a scowl, and Linhardt catches the way her gaze darts from side to side. He briefly wonders if she’s trying to look at each of their faces, before he realizes she looks more like she’s searching for something else. _Of course_ —he hasn’t seen Hubert this entire battle. “Step out of the way, all of you,” she says. “I do not wish to harm you more than I already have.”

“You tried to kill us,” Byleth says. His voice is flat, monotonous, completely devoid of emotions. First his father, then his friend the Goddess, and now… “Edelgard, is this because you ascended the throne?”

“My teacher…” Edelgard swallows, turns away. “I should have told you then. But… even now I cannot find the right words.”

Byleth doesn’t respond, and in the silence that follows Rhea turns to him. “Byleth, you understand what you must do. Kill Edelgard at once. Letting her live now will only spell the destruction of the Church—no, of all of Fódlan in the future.”

Byleth gives her a scornful look. “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

Flayn makes a choked sound, Ferdinand coughs uncomfortably, and Rhea herself looks appalled. Despite the situation, Linhardt can’t help but want to bury his face in his hands. Why on earth has this man still not grown more used to noble language after living in a place rife with the upper-class for nearly a year by now?

Rhea recovers admirably quickly and clears her throat. “Professor, it is important you show me where your loyalty lies. I understand this may be a difficult decision, but—”

“No, it isn’t.” Byleth draws his sword. Edelgard freezes. “Everyone.”

“Professor,” Linhardt instinctively answers, along with a few other scattered voices. Caspar’s isn’t one of them—he looks torn, looking between Byleth, Edelgard, and Rhea in indecision.

“You know what we have to do here.”

This time there is no response. Dorothea exhales harshly and looks away; Lysithea opens her mouth, then closes it right afterwards without a sound. Linhardt looks at Edelgard again, at how her expression goes from stricken to resigned acceptance. Just _where_ is Hubert? Linhardt knows that man is never too far from Edelgard, and that he’s mastered almost all known variations of the Warp spell, if anyone can get Edelgard out of this situation it would be him—

But why does Linhardt want Edelgard to escape, to _live,_ so badly? It can’t just be because she had once been his classmate—she’d tried to kill them all, for goodness’ sake. And yet…

He looks down, at the same time Caspar looks up; their gazes meet, and Linhardt falters at the resolve he can see burning in Caspar’s eyes, that same rock-solid determination to push through with what he believes in. It’s a look Linhardt has seen on that face far too many times to believe he can convince Caspar out of anything now, and Linhardt finds himself nodding, just slightly, enough for only Caspar to notice.

Yes, he knows it now. By Caspar’s side is where he belongs. He takes a deep breath, readies magic at his fingertips, and tenses himself to move quickly—Byleth’s face is inscrutable, but Linhardt doubts he would truly go against Rhea now. If Edelgard can just survive for a few seconds, Caspar can keep Byleth busy long enough for Linhardt to rush forward and Warp her somewhere els—

“You.” Byleth raises his sword, and like it has a mind of its own it whips out to stop an inch before Rhea’s neck. “Out of our way.”

Linhardt’s magic abruptly dies in his hands. Caspar actually trips, and Bernadetta has to steady him before he falls on his face. Flayn’s hands fly up to her mouth.

“P—Professor?” Edelgard manages, sounding utterly bewildered. Linhardt has never seen her this confused before, even if he combines every single lecture on archery they’ve had throughout the entire school year. Not that he can blame her—just _what_ is happening? Is Byleth truly doing what he looks like he’s doing right now?

Rhea looks shocked, visibly attempts to compose herself, and fails. “By… Byleth, now. Surely there’s been a misunderstanding here. I clearly remember ordering you to—”

“Yes, I remember it too.” Byleth’s expression, nor the target of his sword, does not change. “I do not remember agreeing to it, though. Now get out of our way and let us walk from here or I will cut your throat.”

His words are more brash and brazen than Linhardt—and probably the rest of the class—has heard before, and to speak to _Archbishop Rhea_ like this, of all people—

“I see.” Rhea’s expression has hardened, and Linhardt does a double-take when he sees her lips, usually in a kind, demure smile, curl downwards into an animalistic snarl. “I see where you stand now. I thought perhaps you could have finally been the one to bring the goddess Sothis back to life… but I was wrong. You are just another failure.”

Byleth doesn’t even look like he’s listening. “Everyone, get back,” he orders, and they all scramble to stand behind him. Caspar looks like he means to protest and to stand beside him instead, but Linhardt grabs him and pulls him back—if Rhea truly means to fight, then this is not a battle even Caspar can win. “Edelgard, is Hubert on his way?”

Edelgard nods. “Any moment now. But, my teacher, are you sure—”

Byleth doesn’t get the chance to respond—Rhea’s words, having devolved to white noise in Linhardt’s ears, suddenly rise in volume as if forcing them to listen to her. “So be it! If you choose to stand against me, against the one who gave you life,” she declares, taking a wide step back and hunching down in some strange posture that simply cannot possibly be a good sign, “then I shall simply have to rip your chest open… _and take back your heart myself!_ ”

“Get back!” Byleth shouts again, raising his sword, but that hardly does anything to shield them from the brilliant green glow Rhea suddenly emanates like a blazing bonfire—Linhardt feels Caspar grab onto him this time, but more out of fright than anything. Is it magic? Linhardt numbly thinks, squinting against the blinding light. Is it some sort of ancient, forbidden spell known only by the Church?

When the light fades and he finds himself staring back at some massive green reptile that he belatedly realizes is a _dragon,_ all Linhardt can really think is, _Oh._

“What the fuck,” Byleth says, blankly, which Linhardt thinks perfectly encapsulates everyone’s thoughts right now.

As if on cue deep violet light flickers in Linhardt’s peripheral, and he turns to see Hubert at Edelgard’s side, his one visible eye wide at the sight of… Rhea? Can that dragon really be called Rhea anymore? “So she has finally revealed her true form,” Hubert notes, placing a hand on Edelgard’s shoulder. “The monster that has terrorized Fódlan for generations… the Immaculate One.”

“Very glad you’ve decided to show up now, Hubie,” Dorothea says, her eyes fixed on Rhea… no, the Immaculate One before them, “but it would be nice if you could save the explanation for after we get out of here!”

Hubert gives them a confused look. “All of you?”

“Hurry _up,_ ” Bernadetta whimpers, already clutching the edge of his uniform.

Linhardt initially doubts even Hubert can perform a Warp spell with over ten people, but somehow he does it—the draw back is that Linhardt, predictably, ends up nauseous as soon as they arrive in what appears to be some sort of terribly-lit camp. “W—Where are we? Where is this?” Flayn cries. “Edelgard, Hubert, Professor! This… You cannot truly be planning to go against the Church and Lady Rhea!”

“Flayn.” Edelgard’s voice is hard. “I do not expect you to join our ranks—we only brought you here because I doubt the Immaculate One would have been able to avoid injuring you in that state. But… please, give it some thought—”

“No, no! I refuse! I—” Flayn scrubs furiously at her face and turns away from them. “I thank you for helping me, but I cannot go against my home! Please… Please take me back!”

“Flayn,” Linhardt says, softly. He’s not sure _what_ he means to say, and he doesn’t get any bright ideas when Flayn turns to look at him, distress clear on her face, but he knows he has to say _something._ They share a Crest, and honestly Linhardt can’t just let her leave like this when he still has so many questions for her, still so many chances for them to sit in the library together and study companionably, but…

Flayn seems to take his silence as an explanation all on its own, because she sniffs and turns away from him, too. “Take me back to the monastery,” she repeats, her voice stronger now. “Please, Hubert. This is my last request.”

Hubert turns to Edelgard and Byleth as if for confirmation, and while Byleth remains carefully neutral, Edelgard sighs and nods. “Goodbye, then, Flayn,” she murmurs as Hubert calls on the Warp magic. “In another lifetime, perhaps I could have been able to explain more.”

Flayn must hear this, but she only looks down at the stone floor. She’s gone in another second, too fast for the rest of them to have even been able to say anything.

Edelgard takes a deep breath, exhales, then turns to look at the rest of them. “Does anyone else have any similar sentiments? Please be honest and speak up now. We will not harm you nor anyone else who may wish to return to the monastery. I understand this decision is a difficult one and it would be cruel of me to force you into siding with the Empire.”

For a moment there’s only silence—Linhardt looks around and is hardly surprised to find hints of indecision in nearly everyone’s faces. Ferdinand looks distinctly uncomfortable, Dorothea is frowning down at the ground, Bernadetta is fiddling at the hem of her skirt, Ashe can’t seem to meet anyone’s eyes… Caspar is beside him, his arms folded over his chest. “I’m with you, Edelgard,” he suddenly declares, the first one to speak. “You’re not going against the Church for no reason, and I’ve always trusted you on the battlefield before. This time’s no different.”

Even Edelgard herself looks surprised. “I-I never knew you, er, thought that way, Caspar. In my eyes it looked more like you disregarded every instruction I suggested…”

“You know what I mean! Besides, that old Rhea’s always given me a bad feeling!”

Linhardt clears his throat. “I still have business with you and Hubert, Edelgard. In exchange for my help, I expect a proper explanation about all this very soon.”

“I don’t trust Rhea,” Byleth says, flatly. Linhardt doesn’t know why he still gets a little surprised whenever Byleth acts like this, calm and composed and so very difficult to shake—when he’s with Linhardt it feels like he becomes the shyest person in the world. “And I was with you when you succeeded the throne. I like to think I would have been able to tell if you were planning anything wrong, but even now I know I trust you. You’re still my student, after all.”

To think that awkward mercenary had been able to become a proper teacher after all, Linhardt muses. Edelgard’s eyes grow visibly watery, and she rubs at her face with the back of her wrist before nodding. “Thank you. Caspar, Linhardt, my teacher, I…”

There are more agreements from the rest of them: Ferdinand, despite his family going against the Empire; Dorothea, who has always been fond of Edelgard; Bernadetta, even as she’s shaking and trembling; Ashe, whose adoptive father had been killed at the hands of the Church; Lysithea, who admires Edelgard above anyone else. “There are already a few other fellow students within this provisional camp,” Hubert says, nodding in the direction of what looks like an infirmary, “and even some… familiar faces, I suppose. Try not to panic. In any case, our next order of business will be to take over Garreg Mach. Its being in the center of Fódlan makes it an extremely strategic location to—”

“Excuse me.”

Linhardt swallows back the nervousness he can feel creeping up his throat like bile. He hadn’t been imagining the lack of one last person’s voice after all. Edelgard looks like she already knows what is coming, too, but she turns to face them anyway. “Petra.”

She’s already standing a few ways away from the rest of the group, her arms folded over her chest, her gaze downcast. The battle earlier had left her usually tidy braid loose and messy, strands falling over her face. “I apologize deeply, my friends,” Petra whispers. “But I cannot do this. I cannot see myself fighting for the Empire and not feel like a traitor to my country.”

“You…” Edelgard closes her eyes and sighs, then opens them again to face Petra properly. “No, I understand. You are a valuable friend and companion, but I will remain true to my words. I will not, and cannot, force you to fight with us. Your battle…”

“My battle will be on the other side of this war.” Petra lifts her gaze and meets Edelgard’s eyes. “I apologize, Edelgard. I see you as a close friend as well. But if I am to stand as your equal, I cannot do so while beneath you.”

Linhardt had never been particularly close to Petra—he had never been particularly _close_ with any of the other Eagles aside from Caspar, really, and Byleth if he counts. But something in his chest twists all the same when Hubert prepares another Warp spell and Petra happens to meet his eyes in the small crowd—against his will he remembers when he had tripped and fallen and Petra had tried helping him up, only for him to push her away and keep on running. Had he ever apologized for that like he said he would? It seems so long ago now, when they had just met and they had barely even known one another.

Then she disappears, gone as quickly as Flayn had left, and Linhardt is left with only the scant few memories of her and her promise that they will meet her soon, only with her on the opposite end of the battlefield.

They have a month before they plan to head to war on Garreg Mach, which does not sound like a lot of time—after Edelgard explains her reasons for going against the Church and dismisses them to let them all prepare in their own ways, Linhardt finds himself heading to the infirmary. There are wounded Empire soldiers everywhere, some of them he recognizes from the earlier battle, and he’s barely aware he’s already moving to heal them until he’s halfway through a spell and sharp pain stings his leg.

This Crest. This damn, damned Crest. Will he ever be rid of it? Will he ever be able to heal like he used to, _live_ like he used to? Will Edelgard’s war, her promise to abolish the nobility system and erase Crests from the world… will that truly help him, too?

He scans the infirmary—Mercedes from the Blue Lions and Marianne from the Golden Deer are both here, as well as Professor Manuela, surprisingly enough. Linhardt briefly contemplates trying to talk to Marianne about her Crest, because Linhardt’s heard a few rumors about it here and there and he’s simply dying to know more about it, but he supposes he can save the research for later, preferably for when he has his research materials again. Oh, he hopes the student dorms don’t end up getting set on fire once they head to battle… he wouldn’t mind getting rid of all the extra uniform sets he has in there, it will be a relief to wear his own clothes again, but the _books,_ Yuri would never forgive him…

“Lin?”

“Caspar.” Linhardt looks down, mildly surprised to find Caspar at his side. He’d been so deep in thought, he hadn’t even noticed. “What is it?”

“Just, well… you’re sure about this, right?” Caspar asks, shoving his hands in his pockets with a heavy sigh. “I’m not having second thoughts or anything! I’m just… I don’t know. This is tough. We’re barely real adults yet, but we’re about to fight in a war? I get what Edelgard was saying, about changing Fódlan’s screwed-up system, ‘cause, well, it _is_ pretty screwed up, when you think about it. But… you don’t like fighting.” He worries on his lower lip. “It’s not too late. You can tell your dad about heading back to the estate now, since he’s siding with the Empire anyway, or…”

“Caspar,” Linhardt says again, only this time he sighs as he speaks. “You know I don’t make choices I haven’t thought through. If I end up regretting this, I will at least still be by your side. Do you really think I would be able to stay at home and feel perfectly fine knowing you are out there, risking your life when I am not around to help you?”

Caspar laughs softly. “Geez, you make it sound like I’d die without you! Which,” he adds, a little morosely, “I… guess I kinda would. I’m so used to being with you that I think I actually _would_ die.”

“Don’t say things like that.” Linhardt turns back to the patient he had been treating just a few minutes ago—the soldier is sleeping soundly now, his wound gone in exchange for a new one on Linhardt’s arm. “Edelgard and Hubert… they know more about the Agarthans than they are letting on, I believe. It was something about how they reacted to Solon and Kronya… and I intend to get substantial answers out of them, once the atmosphere allows it. I hold no love for my second Crest, and I doubt Lysithea does too.”

Caspar’s expression steels into that of his trademark determination once more. “Yeah, I get it. I’ll be with you all the way, Lin, and you can trust me on that. We’re getting that Crest out of you no matter how long it takes or how hard it might be… and I know it’s gonna be hard.”

Linhardt blinks. “Wait, you… you’ll be with me.”

“ _Duh?_ Do _you_ think I’d be fine just sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, while you go off on some dangerous journey looking for a way to get that thing out of you?” Caspar gawks. “Lin, I know I’m not as smart as you, but I’m also not _that_ dumb!”

“You’re not dumb,” Linhardt reminds him, more out of habit than anything. That pesky _th-thump_ is back, drumming in his ears and drowning out almost all other sounds. Has his heartbeat always been this loud? Is something wrong with him? Is a heart attack on its way? But he knows all the telling signs of one, taught to him against his will, and this isn’t one of them. “That… Caspar, that means more to me than I can say…”

“Then don’t say it.” Caspar shrugs, grinning up at him. “Aww, for someone who usually talks a bunch, you sure do end up at a loss for words when someone’s nice to you. But seriously, Lin, I thought this was a given. It can’t just be you with me. It’s gotta be me with you, too! A friendship’s always two ways, you know!”

Linhardt swallows, turning away from Caspar. For some reason the drumming in his ears only gets louder, more deafening, when he looks into sky-blue eyes. “Yes, of… of course,” he murmurs.

 _A friendship._ Is that what this is? Is that what makes his heart race and his face warm and his brain recall the memory of that stormy night’s kiss? It can’t be. But for the longest time Linhardt’s only knowledge of friendship had been with Caspar, and now he can no longer tell if this is how they had always been, or if something is changing inside Linhardt, like a snake shedding its skin and getting ready for the next phase of its life.

It feels like this should be something inconsequential, when compared to the promise of a war hanging over their heads, but Linhardt’s hands itch to touch his lips all the same, to remember how Caspar’s had felt on his. A friendship. Is that what this is?

Is that all they will ever be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- will dancer linhardt actually be a thing? i have no idea either......  
> \- for reference, the current roster is: byleth, edel, hubert, ferdie, doro, caspar, lin, bernie, ashe, mercedes, marianne, lysi, manuela, jeritza. that's BE minus petra, two recruited students from the two other houses, and manuela and jeritza. eerily similar to my other crimson flower fic, actually...  
> \- petra and flayn might come back, although whether as allies or enemies, only god knows  
> \- yes they are finally realizing their feelings...! or at least linhardt is. caspar's mind is a mystery.
> 
> i'll be starting college soon so updates may slow down (or speed up, who knows, maybe i'll spend all the lectures writing fic because i'll be bored out of my mind like i did during high school); please be patient with me! u_u  
> we'll definitely reach post-timeskip by next chapter, though. or... since this isn't in byleth's POV... maybe we'll get to experience those 5 excruciating years as we go!? who knows? not me!!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading (❁´◡`❁) if you liked this and/or want slightly faster updates, check out [this tweet](https://twitter.com/featherxs/status/1239788477807349760)!


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